Wasteland
by imsanehonest
Summary: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones and what begins as a reunion for the traveling partners quickly becomes something far more sinister. AU after "The Last of the Time Lords." Eventually TenMartha.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Wasteland (1/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha, Donna  
**Word Count**: 3,883  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords," and casting spoilers for season four.  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the former travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: A warning to all who dare to venture forth: This shall, very probably, be a very long fic. I have a general outline and I think I know where it's going (mostly), but I make no promises! And the only reason this will be at all readable is due to the lovely**eponymousrose** (on LJ, AKA **StormMedicine** on FF), who is amazing and, officially, the Best Beta Evah ™. All mistakes that remain are mine. Feedback is always appreciated, and thank you for your time!

--

_She's running again, but this time she's got no hand to hold._

_She's dressed in black and she's panting. Her lungs feel like they're on fire and she knows that if she dares to stop her legs will collapse._

_They'll catch her. They'll catch her or kill her, hurt her to get information, find her family and all of those she loves and use them against her._

_And she can't have that._

_She keeps running. Dodging behind corners, leaping over sidewalks, ducking behind obstacles big enough to hide her. But she hears the bullets fly through the air, inches away from her left ear. She feels the pieces of debris in her hair, on her shoulders, gets tiny bits of brick in her eyes._

_But she never stops running._

_Until she comes to a dead-end, and suddenly there's nowhere left to run._

_Resigned, terrified but so very tired, she turns, ready to face her pursuers._

_Instead he's there, and her eyes centimeters away from her favorite junction, where collarbone meets neck and where, if she's very careful, she can make goose bumps form along his skin with only a brush from her fingertips._

_She looks up, smiling, ready to coax those bumps to life, but when she meets his gaze he looks shocked. And she's confused as he stumbles to his knees, as his face becomes pale and as he grasps one of her shoulders with a fierce, but slackening, grip._

_Then she sees that his other hand is clenched to his chest, blood running freely between his fingers._

--

Martha Jones woke up in a cold sweat, jerking out of bed and breathing heavily as she looked frantically around her.

It took her several minutes to really believe that she was in her room and not a dark alleyway, and even then she still felt her heart pounding to an unnatural rhythm in her chest.

Well, that was one way to start off the day with a bang.

Slowly forcing herself back to an inner state of calm, Martha dislodged her legs from the tangled blankets and threw them over the side of the bed. Feeling less constricted, she let out a large breath of air and allowed her head to drop, cradled between her hands as she willed her false panic to recede.

She never used to have nightmares. But, she thought with a small snort, a lot had changed since then. Back before she had explored the universe, seen marvels that others could only dream of, before she had loved and long before she had known what real loss was, she'd had no cause for nightmares. And for all of the brilliant things she had seen, in retrospect, she wasn't entirely certain whether the wonders were worth her new demons.

Martha gave her a head a quick shake before she got unsteadily to her feet and slowly made her way to the kitchen. Her whole body seemed to ache and each action she made was met with a small twinge of pain, as if she had been through a grand fight and was still recovering. Such was the case after each of her nightmarish episodes, like a physical blow had been dealt to her while she slept. Had those been the only remnants after each distasteful dream, Martha would have considered herself lucky.

But she wasn't quite so fortunate. What Martha despised most about these nightmares were the thoughts she was left with once they ended. How they forced her to remember a time that was fantastic and ghastly, amazing and yet so very heartbreaking- a time that she had, not so long ago, resolved to forget completely. The fact that these unpleasant dreams compelled her to recall all of those things which she had tried so very hard to erase from her memory put her into a morose mood, one that could take her hours, days, to shake.

The lack of sleep didn't exactly help on that front either, she thought with grim humor, looking to the digital clock on the counter and noting the time. Three AM. She let out a groan.

It wasn't that Martha was unused to function at such hours, or with so little sleep (Martha's particular torturous institution, which liked to cleverly pose as a medical school, expected not only that its pupils learn the particulars of every disease ever contracted by the human race, but also to do it all with little, if any, rest), but an uninterrupted five hours of slumber would have been appreciated.

She wouldn't be allowed such a luxury this evening.

At the thought she flicked on the kitchen light, blinking blearily as the florescent bulbs burst to life. With all of the determination she could muster at the early hour, she turned on the coffee machine and went back to the bedroom, seeking out her books.

Martha knew, just as she did after every episode, there would be no more sleep that night. Not when she could still sense his blood on her hands, still see his widened eyes and still feel his grip on her shoulder.

She gave herself another firm shake as she seized her book bag.

Even so, nightmares were no reason for her to allow the hours before her rotation at the hospital go to waste. Martha had a test in a week and plenty of material to study. And maybe, if she lost herself in her studies, in her work and in her fierce desire to help those who needed her, she could once again forget those horrible, glorious things the dream had compelled her to remember.

Resolved, in ten minutes Martha had gathered her materials and her full coffee mug to the dining table, pushing all thoughts of the universe out of her mind, even as she felt blood under her fingernails.

The Doctor ran headlong into the TARDIS, blindly yanking his companion in behind him (who made a disgruntled shrieking noise as she fell to the floor) before flinging the door shut. He grinned at the sound of bullets thudding uselessly against the ship's exterior and looked to his cohort, who was struggling to her feet with a decidedly murderous look on her face.

Well, the Doctor thought optimistically, the good news was that she didn't appear to be hurt.

The bad news was that the diagnosis of her good health was brought about due to the fact that she seemed perfectly capable of caring out said murderous desires.

And the Doctor was, as a rule, against violence, particularly when it was aimed towards himself.

"Well, wasn't _that_ brilliant?" Donna muttered in a tone that clearly indicated that she did not, in fact, find 'that' brilliant at all.

He gave a nervous gulp, doing his best to ignore the tone and the glare she was sending him as he dashed further into his ship.

See, the Doctor didn't want Donna Noble, his latest traveling companion, knowing that he was slightly terrified of her.

Not to imply that he was scared, mind. No, no no. Just that she had the capacity to unnerve him. After all, throughout his nine hundred years of existence while exploring the ins and outs of the universe, the Doctor had found few creatures capable of shouting quite as piercingly as Donna Noble when in a tiff.

So, in hopes of evading the inevitable, the Doctor focused all of his attention on the flicking and turning of various do-dads on the console. "Yes, quite lovely," he replied agreeably. "Just a walk in the park, really." He frowned, halting in his movements. "Although there weren't any benches." He smiled, giving a slight nod as an idea came to mind. "Must bring that up, next time we drop in on the Vergonities." He reset the coordinates of the TARDIS for a week later at the same location. "Who has a park but doesn't think to put in benches?"

Donna blinked at him. "We've both just been exiled and nearly executed on that planet," she said slowly, appearing to be clenching her jaw in a rather painful fashion.

"Well, yes," the Doctor allowed, only just resting the urge to point out the obvious dental damages to jaw-clenching. It probably wouldn't be wise at the moment to imply that Donna had teeth that were less than sparkling and pristine, given her current temperament.

"And you want to go back?" Donna asked, walking irritably towards him.

He decided, perhaps foolishly, to overlook her annoyance. "Well, not_now_, obviously."

She stopped when she reached him, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling. "When?"

The Doctor quickly spun the date dial on the TARDIS. Perhaps a week was a bit too soon for Donna. "Oh, if we give them a month they should be all right," he said glibly. "It was just a little thing, after all-"

He could feel his companion's glare burning a hole on the back of his neck. "You overthrew the government because they weren't taking proper care of the national parks."

He rubbed at the spot (he could almost see the smoke rising from his burning flesh) and turned to her, exasperated. "Now, Donna, I didn't overthrow anything." The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Humans, you always over exaggerate. I just," he waved an arm flippantly. "Lightly chastised them."

"By burning down their senate!"

The Doctor winced, recognizing the screech he had been trying so desperately to avoid.

"Fine." He sighed loudly. "We'll give them a year." He reluctantly spun the dial once more.

Donna raised an eyebrow, arms still crossed in front of her chest.

"A decade?" he tried hopefully.

Her expression remained severe.

"A century?"

She threw her arms up into the air. "That's it, take me home."

"Oh, fine. Two centuries. But then they really do need to put in some benches-"

The Doctor stopped mid-sentence, his mind finally catching up to his mouth.

"What did you say?"

"Home," Donna snapped, she pointed a stern finger at him. "I'm going home and you're taking me." She jabbed him in the chest before stomping around the console, a habit she was prone to when cross with him.

"B-but," the Doctor stuttered before regaining his composure, trying not to sound as devastated, hopeless, as he felt. "Why?"

He couldn't be alone. Not again. Not so soon after he had felt that small void in the back of his skull filled, only to have it emptied once more. Not when all he could hear was the echoing silence in his head, when he stretched his mind out into the universe and felt absolutely nothing reaching back.

_I win._

Donna's voice snapped him back to the present.

"I've nearly been executed today!"

Shaking himself, doing his best to keep the pleading note out of his voice, the Doctor addressed her again. "Oh, but that's not so bad. It's not like we were _actually_ executed. Now that would have been unfortunate. But this? This is just good fun."

"For you!" She huffed. "For me it's a series of really bad hair days and lots of screaming."

"That can be fun!"

She stared darkly at him. "The almost dying throws the fun off a bit."

It was that dark look that made the Doctor seriously consider the possibility that Donna would not be swayed. Oh, she was cross with him often enough (more often than the Doctor was completely comfortable with, given the screeching), but that annoyance rarely led anywhere beyond a bit of irritable muttering and a few sloppy insults.

But this was different.

It seemed as if the Doctor had pushed Donna Noble too far.

It had happened to nearly every traveler he had taken along in the past. He'd said the wrong thing, asked too much of them, waited a moment too long, yelled too loudly, acted too late, become too alien for them to handle.

Everyone, the Doctor had learned, had their breaking point, and eventually, they all reached it.

Except for every once in a while, when fate would step in. And then the option of breaking was taken away from them all.

He allowed his mind to wander for an instant (remembering brown eyes and peroxide blonde hair), but then brought himself firmly in check. He couldn't afford to live in the past. Not anymore.

This time, fate would have no hand in the breaking, and it was slowly dawning on the Doctor that Donna had, perhaps, been bent too much by the life he had forced upon her.

"Home it is then," he said at last, doing his best to hide all emotion from his tone, refusing to beg. He looked down at the console, ready to set the coordinates. "When?"

Donna looked at him curiously for an instant before tilting her head in thought. "Easter," she declared after a moment, sitting on the sofa and nodding firmly.

The Doctor frowned, looking up from his controls and furrowing his brow at her. "I thought you don't like the holidays?"

Donna stared blankly at him. "I don't like Christmas, so that means I don't like the holidays?"

"Well, as far as holidays go, Christmas is a big one. Sort of sets the mood for all the others." The Doctor leaned against to console, devoting himself entirely to the conversation. He wouldn't let himself admit that he was trying to make them both forget the coordinates he had yet to set. "I mean, really, a jolly fat man wearing a red suit? Priceless. Now, granted, passing out all of those presents does get rather tiresome, but that costume is just too fun." He smiled happily in retrospect, glancing fondly off into the distance. "Plus the cookies, which are always a nice perk."

Donna was obviously processing something, and as such blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I'm not allowed to dislike Christmas, then?" she asked accusingly.

She had the tendency, the Doctor had learned, to not always think before she spoke. It wasn't because Donna was thick, although that was an easy and quick assumption to make, one that the Doctor, admittedly, had made himself upon their first meeting. But throughout their time together he had slowly been learning more about this secretary from London, and had found that he had sorely misjudged her.

Not to say that Donna would ever be clever, but she certainly wasn't stupid. Just rather careless with her words and more measured as she went about mulling over details presented to her. Indeed, the Doctor had been surprised time and again by Donna's remarkably perceptive nature, when the situation truly called for it. Although not the best to bring around to a board meeting, during a crisis Donna, in between fits of screeching and hair pulling, was an invaluable asset.

One that he wasn't willing to be rid of just yet.

"You can dislike whatever you'd like," the Doctor said with an innocent shrug, throwing her one more hint and hoping it would be enough to distract her. "Just seems that it's a lot of work gone to waste if you do."

Donna started before blinking pointedly at him. "Are you saying you're Santa Clause ?"

The Doctor sputtered a bit while feigning shock (a beautiful performance, if he did say so himself). "Well, maybe not _the_ Sant-"

"Wait." Donna shook her head suddenly while holding up a silencing finger. "No!" She yelled, pointing the finger at him, yet again. "No, shut it!" She stood up from the sofa, beginning her pacing anew. "I don't care." The finger was still being wagged at him in a decidedly accusatory manner. "You're just trying to distract me." It made another jab at him, and suddenly Donna was stalking towards him, face stern. "I'm going home, I'm not going to be shot at for a few days, and it's going to be Easter when I get there. You got it?"

When she finally stopped she was mere millimeters away from his face and practically spitting on him.

The Doctor tried not to seem wholly intimidated by the woman, but he feared that his small, jerking step backward might have given him away.

Donna noted the movement and a slightly guilty look appeared on her features. She sighed, stepping away from him and running a hand sheepishly through her hair. She began again, this time in a much calmer, far more soothing, voice. "I've been traveling with you for three months-"

"You can't know that," the Doctor interjected quickly.

She snorted. "Oh, yes I can. I've been counting the hours."

The Doctor wasn't completely certain if she was serious or not.

"As I said," she continued, obviously pleased with having silenced him. "I've been traveling with you for three months and have had my life threatened," she paused for a bit, counting quietly to herself before nodding. "Sixteen times."

The Doctor returned the nod solemnly. "Not too bad, that."

Donna's eyes widened and he swore he saw her twitch. "What?"

"That's good," the Doctor reassured her, puzzled over her slightly petrified tone. "Usually it's up to at least thirty by now."

This, apparently, was not the right thing to say.

"Take me home, alien boy!" All calm gone, Donna began stalking around the ship again.

The Doctor let out a long sigh. "Fine, then," he said reluctantly before sending the TARDIS on its way and holding out a hand to Donna. "I suppose I'd best be getting my key back." He twitched his fingers dully, expectant.

Donna stared at the offending hand with a look akin to horror on her face. "What?"

"My key," the Doctor clarified in a monotone voice, his sullen mood showing in his uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm. "If you're leaving then there's no reason why you should want to keep it."

There was a moment of tense silence, abruptly ended when Donna screamed, "No!"

The Doctor winced and scowled. "What do you mean 'no'?"

"I mean 'no, you may not have it!'"

He raised an eyebrow in annoyance. Of course Donna would be stubborn about such a thing - just to irk him, he was sure.

"And why not?" He demanded, snapping.

Donna remained unfazed, unimpressed or not noticing his temper. "I'm coming back, you twit!" she yelled.

He was reduced to gaping at her in sheer astonishment.

When he had finally regained enough sense to close his mouth, he asked, "You are?"

"Of course I am." She glared at him. "Just because I need a break doesn't mean I'm quitting!"

The Doctor found that processing thoughts was oddly difficult. "What?"

"A few days, a week. That's all." She gave a strained chuckle. "I just want some afternoon tea without getting interrupted by an impending apocalypse, all right?" She hit him lightly on the shoulder, grinning kindly at him. "I'll be back keeping you in check in no time."

And had he been thinking clearly, the Doctor would have been more than a little unnerved by the uncharacteristically cautious way Donna was handling him, would have noticed how she flicked her eyes in a calculating manner over his form, how she seemed to be treading on his emotions with great care.

But, as was usually the case, the Doctor hadn't realized that his companion knew him far better than he would ever let himself admit.

She rolled her eyes and turned away from him. "'Give me your key,' he says," she muttered as she slowly made her way down the ramp to the door of the TARDIS. "You know, it doesn't matter what species, men are always unbelievably thick," she ranted to herself, seeming to ignore him entirely.

So the Doctor thought it best, for his own safety, to nod agreeably and say nothing. Helpful, since he was still too shocked (and relieved) to know he wouldn't be opening up another vacancy to say anything terribly intelligent.

Donna leaned against the railing and looked from the door to the Time Rotor. She raised her eyebrows expectantly before blinking pointedly at him. "Are we there yet?"

"Right," the Doctor shook himself. "Yeah, sorry." He fiddled with some controls on the console, trying to appear occupied so she wouldn't think he had been staring mindlessly at her.

From the indulgent smile she sent him, the Doctor had the feeling that Donna wasn't fooled.

"One week, you hear?" she reminded him, setting off for the door. "And if I almost die even once during that week I get to start over, understood?"  
He gave a firm nod, grinning. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She opened the door and paused before leaving, looking back to him and smirking. "Don't get into too much trouble without me. Without supervision you'd probably summon the devil or start World War Three or something."

He thought it best not to mention that he had already done both of those, and with supervision.

Instead, he settled for a reassuring, "I won't."

Donna snorted. "Like I believe that."

The Doctor couldn't help but grin.

She sighed and waved a dismissive hand at him, already gleefully eyeing the building that housed her flat across the street. "See you in seven days, Martian." With that she was out the door, striding assuredly into her own world, the Doctor smiling as the latch to his clicked closed.

For now, at least.

Still beaming, the Doctor clapped his hands together and turned away from the exit, looking to the console eagerly. With Donna on vacation and a universe to explore, he had only one question on his mind.

What to do next?

He could always talk to the Vergonities about those benches, or check up on New Earth, or go drop in on some famous person or other. He had always wanted to meet King Louie.

But the thought of doing it all alone seemed unbearably devastating, a sensation that the Doctor was content to trying to ignore completely. After all, solitude brought with it memories and regrets, ones that he had been avoiding for months, years, lifetimes.

And being alone left him time to think those thoughts, deprived him of the distraction, affection, he would never admit was more than just a luxury throughout his travels.

And why should he bother himself with a problem that need not exist?

Determined, he jumped forward and set to work, fiddling with odds and ends on the console, setting coordinates for a week after he had dropped Donna off.

And he was just about to set the TARDIS in motion when he felt something shudder against his chest.

The Doctor tensed, afraid for a moment that the Vergonities had managed to plant an explosive on him. (It wouldn't have been the first time it had happened.) Then the source of the movement began to _hum_.

Well, if it was a bomb it was certainly happier about it than most.

Frowning, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, grabbing the source of the vibrations and noises. It took him an instant, but then he saw the name, presented in blue, on the small view-screen of the mobile phone.

Grinning broadly, the Doctor re-set the coordinates, deciding that picking up Donna could be delayed a bit and that he had earned a small vacation of his own.

She always did have impeccable timing, that Martha Jones.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Wasteland (2/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 2,417  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. -sniff-  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords."  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: **eponymousrose** wins the Awesome Person of the Year Award for being the coolest beta around. If you can read this without your eyes falling out? Her doing. I'm going to be doing my best to update about once a week, give or take, but please don't take my word for it. I'll likely blame any delays on a fast-approaching apocalypse or some such thing, so if I start screaming about brimstone and fire, feel free to kick me. -grin- Thanks for your time, and concrit is always welcomed!

---

Martha was slowly trudging her way up the steps to the house, thick winter coat on and her heavy bag flung over her shoulder, when she saw a shadow darkening the pavement in front of her.

She felt her heart stop beating for an instant as she looked up tentatively, ready to run.

Only to see the expectant, smiling face of her younger brother in front of the door.

"Leo." She felt her body lose its tension and almost let out an audible sigh as relief washed over her. "Hello."

Leo raised his eyebrow. "Good to know you're glad to see me then," he muttered, obviously mistaking her slumped shoulders for disappointment rather than relief.

Which, all things considered, was really for the best.

"Right, sorry." Martha gave her head a quick shake, trying to dislodge the cobwebs that had formed during a long day of rounds performed with too little sleep. "Of course I'm glad to see you." She plastered a smile on her face and walked the remaining distance to the door, not quite looking at her brother as she brushed past him. He really shouldn't have been there. "What're you doing here?"

"Oh, you know, just stopping by," he said, tone puzzled as he followed her into the house.

"'Just stopping by'?" she asked speculatively. She hung her coat on the nearby hook before turning to look at her brother with her arms crossed over her chest. Leo, although a wonderful father, a good brother and a fine resource when one was in dire need of an effective prank, wasn't the sort to 'just stop by.'

"I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop in, maybe catch up a bit."

Martha remained severe, restraining every impulse that begged her to fling her arms around him, to hold him close and tell him how very much she had missed him, these past months.

But she kept her cold façade firmly in place, focused on the irritation she felt at being cornered.

Because she knew very well who was behind Leo's appearance on the doorstep.

And by the way her brother's face was quickly drooping, Martha suspected that he knew it too.

"Mum sent me to check up on you."

Martha rolled her eyes and turned away from him, making her way further into the house. "If Mum wants to check up on me she should do it herself."

Leo followed her. "Well, you haven't exactly been easy to reach these past few months, have you?" he asked, tone annoyed as they stopped in the lobby. "You never answer your phone, we can't reach you at the hospital and you don't call unless it's two in the morning and I have work in four hours." He snorted at that, finding the nearby sofa and slumping dramatically into it. "And thank you for those, by the way." He rubbed at his eyes tiredly, sending her a longsuffering look. "I told Mum about our lovely chats and she seemed to think, since I'm the only one you choose to contact at all - even if it's at hours of the night during which nothing should be alive, much less awake - that I'm the one who should harass you now."

She felt a panic rising in her chest. "I'm sorry Leo, but it was only twice and I wouldn't have called-"

He sighed. "If you weren't worried about the foundations of the house, I know." He rubbed at his forehead and waved away her apology, all energy seeming to leave him.

Martha couldn't help the sense of guilt that overrode her then, as she looked at her brother's slumped and exhausted form, knowing that her absence from his life must have done a great deal to contribute to his current state. It couldn't be easy, being a young man with a family to support, to already be so independent at such a young age, and to be the newly appointed ambassador of the Jones family.

Because Martha had been the one that people turned to when they needed something, when their life laid in ruins and when they felt as if they were on their last limb.

Martha Jones had always been good at saving people.

In the past, there was never a time when she wasn't ready, able and willing to aid her family in anything they undertook, to consel and look after them during difficult times.

But that simply wasn't possible anymore.

And so Leo took up her mantle, adding one more burden to his already heavy load, and all because Martha couldn't, wouldn't, be there to share the weight.

"All the same," he continued, sitting up a bit straighter on the sofa. "An odd creek seems like a strange reason to phone in at two, Martha." Martha opened her mouth to protest again, but Leo held out a halting hand. "But it's all right," he reassured her, letting out a weary laugh. "I just wish you were the one who has to listen to Shonara after she tries to get Keisha back to bed."

Martha felt her gloomy mood, the one that had been troubling her since her abrupt and unpleasant awakening that morning, suddenly fade at the mention of her would-be sister-in-law and niece. "How are the girls, then?"

Leo's sentiments obviously echoed hers, and he allowed his face to break out into a huge smile as he leaned forward. "Good. Shonara's been promoted and Keisha's three now."

Finally relaxing, she dropped her bag on the small coffee table in the center of the room, looking intently at Leo and sporting a wide grin of her own. "Three, already? When did she grow up so fast?"

"When you weren't looking." His smile suddenly became sad, and the accusations of the things that weren't said weighed heavily on them both.

"She misses you, you know," he said at last in a quiet, gentle tone.

One that did nothing to ease Martha's shame.

"I know," she said with genuine regret. "I wish I could see you all more."

Leo's face contorted and he slumped back down in his seat, looking away from her.

Martha frowned. "What?"

He shook his head, still refusing to look at her. "Nothing."

"Leo," Martha said in a manner that no one in the Jones family dared to defy (a gift she had inherited from her mother). "What is it?"

Compelled by the voice, he finally looked at her, staring her straight in the eye as he coldly said, "It's a lie."

It felt like a blow. "What?" She stood up, suddenly feeling exposed, attacked. She made her way to the other side of the room.

"If you really wanted to see us more, Martha, you would."

She shook her head in denial. If he only knew-

But, of course he couldn't.

"Leo, it's not like that."

"Sure it is."

"It's work. I can't get away most of the time, and then when I can I'm just so tired-"

"Oh, get off it Martha!" Leo snapped, standing as well and glaring at her. "Stop acting already. You haven't been around because you don't want to be around, it's that simple." He began to pace, still looking at her with an angry stare. "And not just us! What about your friends? What happened to them?"

She gave her head another shake, gaining her courage, feeling her own anger growing. "I don't know what you mean."

"It's been over a year, Martha!" he yelled. "You can't keep living like this, shutting us all out, pretending none of it happened!"

And suddenly she was back across the room, millimeters away from her brother's face and shouting. "And what would you know about it, Leo?" She hadn't noticed that she had backed him into a wall. "Nothing. You have no idea what I-"

Like a switch had been flipped, Martha suddenly realized she had been screaming, that she had lost control. Seeing the shocked, and yet oddly pleased, look on her brother's face did nothing to ease her embarrassment or worry.

Taking a large, calming breath she stepped back. "Look, I'm sorry." She sighed. "It's just work and my patients-"

And the nightmares.

She gave her head another shake. "Here, let me get you something to drink. Do you want a soda?"

Leo seemed to take a breath himself. "Yeah, sure."

Nodding quickly, Martha dashed out of the room and into the kitchen. Once there she took a few moments to gather herself, to recognize the imperative need to get Leo out of the house and back to his family, before he asked too many questions.

She had to keep him safe.

Determined, Martha quickly got a glass and some pop, and began walking back to the lobby. It was simple. She would let him finish his drink and then send him on his way, maybe by mentioning something about research. That would work, surely.

Plan in place, she entered the room. "You know, I can't seem to stop drinking these things. I know how unhealthy they are and what they do to a person's body, but-" Martha stopped mid-sentence, frozen as she saw Leo, from his spot on the couch, hastily snap close her mobile phone, which had, until she had left, been securely stored in her bag.

Her eyes remained fixed on the phone. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing, sorry." He quickly placed the phone on the table, frantically standing and shrugging in an unconvincing manner. "Just looked like you had a message."

She didn't move, glass and soda still clenched dumbly in either hand, as she finally removed her gaze from the mobile to her brother. "You called someone. Who did you call, Leo?"

He remained silent, staring at the carpet guiltily.

"Leo!"

"I'm sorry," he sputtered, holding his arms out helplessly, rushing towards her, lightly gripping her shoulder in comfort. "But Martha, you need to see him."

She shook off his grip. "How dare you." She shoved the soda into his hands, fury and fear combining to make her vision blur, to make her feel unsteady on her feet as she pushed away from him, shaking her head in disbelief. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you?"

Leo simply gaped at her in utter confusion, looking at her as if she was someone he didn't know.

After all, why wouldn't Martha Jones want to see the Doctor?

"You need to leave," she said with barely maintained calm. "Right now."

"Martha, I just want to hel-"

She wouldn't let him finish the word. "Get out!" she screamed, and for an instant Leo simply stared at her.

"Now!"

And with that he was striding out of the room, expression slightly frightened as he whipped past her, the front door slamming closed as he left.

Once certain that he had gone, Martha allowed her knees to buckle so she sat on a small arm chair in the room. Permitted herself to gasp out the shaky breaths she had been holding in ever since she saw Leo grasping the phone.

Of course he had wanted to help, but there were so many things about the Doctor that Leo simply didn't realize.

Leo hadn't learned, like Martha had, that sooner or later the Doctor destroyed everything he touched.

---

The Doctor was more than a little pleased with himself when he managed to land directly in front of Francine Jones' garage some moments after receiving Martha's call. Granted, he hadn't actually been able to talk to Martha, what with the connection quickly being lost right after answering (21st century contraptions, he never could quite figure out how to use them), but the call alone had been more than enough to send him merrily on his way.

The TARDIS, too, seemed happy about their destination, the ship almost sighing in contentment as she touched ground. Odd, that she hadn't managed such a mishap-free landing in quite some time. Although, even if the landing had been a success, it was still a bit later than the Time Lord was entirely comfortable with; the Doctor noted the exceptionally dark sky and eerily empty streets when he poked his head out.

Well, nothing to be done about that. Besides, Martha wouldn't mind. She was the one who had called him, after all. Wasn't his fault if she insisted on being a night owl, although he did hope that Francine would see it that way.

Forever the optimist, the Doctor strode confidently out of his ship, patting a panel of the TARDIS fondly for a job well done before making his way to the front door and ringing the small bell that awaited him there.

It took a few moments and a couple more rings of the bell before lights slowly started to flicker on throughout the house, but soon enough the bleary, robed-clad form of Francine Jones opened the front door.

The Doctor flinched expectantly. Although he and the Jones family had bonded in powerful, deep and unbreakable ways during the year that wasn't, that didn't necessarily mean that a woman like Mrs. Jones would ever be happy to greet the Doctor, the eager alien at her front door, at unspeakably early hours of the morning.

So, that made it all the more surprising when, after a flash of recognition, she promptly flung herself into the Time Lord's arms, holding him warmly in what the Doctor could only describe as a motherly, grateful, embrace.

"Thank God you're here," she mumbled into his jacket, and the Doctor's surprise quickly morphed into concern.

He pulled her away slightly, looking at her worriedly. "Francine, what's wrong?" He gazed over her shoulder into the, seemingly empty, house. "Where's Martha?"

Francine looked at him in a way that made him suspect that he wasn't nearly as clever as he knew he was.

"Has she got a new apartment, then?" he asked, releasing her and grinning. "Is it teal? Because I must admit, I did like the teal."

Another frown. "An apartment?"

"No apartment?" The Doctor shrugged. "Well, suppose she'd need a while, what with her old one blowing up and all. Insurance papers might be a little tricky."

Francine's brow was furrowed in a disturbingly alarmed manner. "You don't know, do you?"

The Doctor's grin quickly faded at her tone and he regarded the woman seriously, fear starting to worm its way into his chest. "Know what?"

"Doctor," she said, staring at him seriously. "You've been gone for over two years."


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Wasteland (3/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 2,831  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords," and casting spoilers for season four.  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the former travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: I'm so sorry for the delay! wince Life, explosions, etc. No fun. This chapter hasn't been beta read yet, and advice is always nice in any case, so concrit is most welcomed! Thanks for your time. 

---

In the minutes that followed the Doctor wasn't able to partake in any action more complex than blinking at Mrs. Jones dumbly.

"What?" 

"Two years," she repeated, gazing at him kindly as he took a bewildered step back from the entrance.

The Time Lord, finding himself on the receiving end of time's misfortune, was not handling this revelation well. No wonder he wasn't popular with mothers. What with him dolling out such information upon their every meeting, it was little surprise that the families of his cohorts had a tendency to dislike him.

"That's not possible," he denied in a fit of illogic. The Doctor, when met with a situation that did not coincide with the information he had already gathered, had a tendency to dismiss it entirely. "She would've called before that much-"

But obviously, she hadn't.

He shook himself. "Where is she?"

"At her house, across town." Francine made a gesture inside, reaching for her coat. "I can take you-"

"No, no." This, he felt, would best be an interaction held without Martha's mother present. They were intimate friends, he and Martha, and a mother around would just make things complicated. They had shared too much, seen too many wonders, and been a part of too many critical and life-changing points of history for an outsider to possibly understand their complicated, multi-layered, relationship.

He firmly ignored the inner voice that was, rather irritably, informing him that he just didn't want anyone telling him off for the enraged scolding he was going to be subjecting the medical student to for ignoring him for so long.

The Doctor hated being ignored.

"Just tell me how to get there."

Francine frowned. "You're not going to…?" She motioned to the TARDIS.

"No, I think I'll walk." It wouldn't do to overshoot the date. He had already missed two years, and time was so precious when dealing with this small, frail, race. It was terrifying, to know how much had passed him by, to be aware of how much closer Martha was to the end, to reaching an expiration date.

Everything has it's time, and everything dies. And to the Doctor life of humans passed in no more than a blink of an eye, a blink that was infinitely precious to him, that he didn't wish to miss an instant of.

And he had lost two years of Martha Jones.

Francine rattled off some directions (something about two lefts and right, and then a slight bend to the right followed by an uphill trek for a bit and then another left), which the Doctor thanked her for and then set out on his way.

Only to feel fingers grasping firmly to the arm of his jacket. "Doctor, a lot's changed," Francine said intently, a desperate look in her eyes. "Martha, she's not the same." 

"After two years, I can imagine not." He patted Francine's arm lightly before gently loosening her grip and heading to the street, stroking a panel of the TARDIS fondly before reaching the sidewalk and stuffing his hands into his coat pockets.

Francine stared helplessly after him, yelling into the street. "But don't you want to be told what's happened?"

The Doctor stopped his progress. "Yes," he said, smiling sadly at her. "But I think we both know who I should hear it from."

Francine heaved a large breath and gave a quick, resigned, nod.

The Doctor's face broke out into a far more pleasant grin, which the woman quickly mimicked. "Good." He gave her a wink. "I'll be back."

And with that the Doctor set off on his path, determined to discover what exactly had kept Martha Jones from him for so very long.

---

_Running, always running. _

She wonders why she's never allowed to walk in these dreams.

Because she knows it's a fantasy this time, some cruel construction of her mind that won't let her rest. She knows it's all a fake, she knows what's coming, and she convinces herself that this time she won't let him die. That she'll apply pressure in the right places, tear her dress and make a bandage, do CPR and heal his wounds with her tears if she can't find another way.

So when she reaches the dead-end she's ready, blinking pieces of brick from her eyes as she turns, prepares herself to catch him as he stumbles.

But instead she's facing the Doctor, all smug, friendly smiles in his blue suit, his red shoes, and the gun he's pointing at her chest.

The grin gets wider as he pulls the trigger, and she flinches, expecting hot, fiery pain in her stomach.

Instead she hears a startled, familiar, grunt behind her, and she knows with a terrifying certainty that she's failed. 

She knows that by the time she's turns around, he'll be dead.

--

Martha jerked awake at the sound of the doorbell chiming from the front of the house, heart beating rapidly from another nightmare.

Particularly frustrating given all of the effort she had put into avoiding sleep.

Groggily she pushed herself off of the dining room table, nearly dislodging her nearby cup of coffee as she pulled her various exam papers off of her cheek, where they had been glued for all intents and purposes since she had taken her nap some-

She glanced at the clock hanging from the archway to the kitchen, noting the time to be one in the morning.

-three hours ago.

She sent an accusing glare to the coffee as she tried to straighten herself up, pulling her tank-top straight, rubbing out the creases in her jeans, wiping any embarrassing dried saliva from around her mouth.

That would be the last time she trusted caffeine to keep her up into the wee hours of the morning. She should have known it would fail spectacularly at doing the job that only fear of an impending exam was truly capable of.

She resisted the urge to snort.

She could stay up for weeks at a time if she had a test.

Unfortunately, at some point in the last week it had come to her attention that she had run out of tests to take. For the next six months she was free from exams. Free from multiple choice questions, fill-in bubbles, point two pencils and, most importantly, free of distractions.

It was much more difficult to convince her body to push itself past its endurance when Martha's future wasn't at stake.

And so, she had fallen asleep and dreamt.

Not, to say the least, a pleasant alternative to exhaustion.

The doorbell sounded again, and Martha quickly pushed herself up from the dining table, her mind now working at a semi-normal level and allowing her suspicion to set in. Who made house calls at this hour?

She made her way to the front door, hand hovering over the top drawer of the hallway's side-table for an instant before she thought better of it.

Best not to do anything that couldn't be undone again.

Shaking herself, she continued forward and grasped the handle of a bat that she kept to the side of the door. Grip tight on the bat that she clutched behind her back, Martha cautiously opened the entry, ready for anything.

Anything except for the face that was grinning charmingly at her from the other side of the entrance.

Her mouth opened in shock as she felt the bat slip from her suddenly numb fingers, the metal crashing to the wood floor and causing the Doctor to flinch in sympathy.

But Martha just stared, ignoring the sound entirely and focusing only on that grinning, wonderful, face, the one she had missed for these past two, so very long, years.

The one that had masked the man holding a pistol, the one that could kill.

The Doctor frowned from the doorway, taking a small step forward, making a motion to enter the house.

"Martha?" he asked, tone unnaturally grave, concerned.

Martha snapped back to the present, making the mental effort to separate nightmare from reality.

After all, they were just dreams.

She stepped forward, blocking the Time Lord's entrance into the house. He wouldn't be staying long. 

"You shouldn't be here, Doctor."

The Doctor blinked. "What?"

"You should go," she clarified, a sense of urgency slowly building. "You need to go." She grasped him by the shoulders and spun him around, giving him a gentle push off of the entryway. "Now."

"B-but-"

He was obviously bewildered.

"No time," Martha muttered, closing her door and following him out of the house, guiding him out to the sidewalk. "Just get back into the TARDIS and I'll call you when-" She stopped suddenly, glancing around frantically before turning the Time Lord to face her once more. "Where's the TARDIS?" she demanded, a true panic beginning to creep its way up her spine.

The Doctor blinked a bit more. "I left it at your mother's." 

Martha felt her heart stop beating for an instant. "My mother's?"

The Doctor nodded, sending her a peculiar look, as if he was examining an especially confounding scientific specimen. 

And this particular specimen was frightfully close to lashing out against its researcher.

Her parents.

The Doctor had brought them directly to her parents' front door.

Martha turned on her heel and dashed back into the house, ignoring the Doctor's cry of, "Martha, wait!" as she quickly snagged her keys and purse, running back outside and shakily unlocking the door to her car.

It could already be too late.

---

The Doctor was used to meetings that were less than welcoming, dare he say hostile, but it was a rare occasion indeed when he could make a friend flee from him with a look utter terror on her face.

Or had that been fury?

It was always a bit difficult for him to tell. Very similar facial expressions, really.

Fear or anger, either way the Doctor had certainly done something wrong.

He was a bit used to that.

The medical student that occupied his thoughts ran out of her front door, unsteadily unlocking her car as he made his way toward her.

"Martha," he began, as he neared the vehicle, ready to coax the woman into some sort of calm. 

She threw him a look over the hood of the car. "Come on." She flung open her door and scowled at him. "Get in the car, now!" 

Or he was ready to blindly follow her every instruction. 

That would work too.

He rapidly opened the passenger door and sat down, snapping on his seat belt and throwing Martha a slightly alarmed look.

Women obviously had notion of how frightening they could be when they shouted.

However, after a few minutes of being obediently meek the Doctor lapsed into boredom and, as was his habit, curiosity.

"Where are we going?" he asked, eyeing Martha wearily as she took a left turn with more speed than was entirely safe.

She shot him one annoyed look before explaining. "I'm going to my parent's house, they're back together, by the way, and you're going back to your ship." She sent him another glare. "You're leaving, returning to whatever adventure you abandoned to come in the first place, and you're not coming back until I call you properly."

"Well, actually, you weren't interrupting anything, brilliant timing, by the way. In a bit of a lull, really."

He didn't catch Martha rolling her eyes.

"But that's not the point." 

"What is, then?" she asked in an exasperated tone.

"That you keep shouting," he explained. "I've gotten enough of that these past three months without you adding on to it. Here I was hoping to get a vacation-"

"A what?" Martha all but screeched.

"Oh do stop yelling," he begged, rubbing at his forehead and sighing. "You called me, remember?" He began riffling through his jacket, smiling in triumph when he pulled out the proof of her transaction. "This little mobile here?" He shook the phone vividly. "Ringing with your name on the screen? That was you."

"No," Martha grounded out, grip tightening on the wheel. "That was _Leo_."

The Doctor frowned. "Leo?" 

"My brother."

"I know who Leo is," he snapped, offended. It was hard to forget a man who fought a table and lost. "But why would he call me?"

Martha snorted. "That got you wondering too, then?"

Her sarcasm, when thrown on top of this decidedly unpleasant welcome, was far from appreciated. "Now Martha Jones." He crossed his arms irritably over his chest and frowned at her.

He did his best to convince himself that he wasn't channeling Jackie Tyler.

"I don't see how any of this is a reason to get snippy."

"I'll be as snippy as I please until you're back on the TARDIS," she shot back. 

"And why's that then?" he demanded. "Why so desperate to send me on my way after your baby brother went through all of the trouble of calling me?"

"Because it's not safe."

He stared at her blankly for an instant. "And that's why you want me to go? Because it's not _safe_?"

"Yes." 

"Martha, you do remember me, don't you?" He held out a hand, smiling at her eagerly. "I'm the Doctor, self-proclaimed Defender of the Earth and as such prone to a wee bit of mishap." He sighed dramatically, noticing that she had turned her view away from the road and that a hint of a grin was forming on her features. "Lot of trouble, keeping you lot from getting disintegrated, blown up or otherwise destroyed."

The smile was full-blown now. "Yes, Doctor."

And then she looked at him in that fond, caring, way before turning her attention back to the road. And the Doctor recognized that look, the one that meant more than he let himself believe.

"I remember you," she said, the grin still gracing her lips as she shot him a quick glance from the corner of her eyes.

And he shared the smile, a part of him suspecting that it might be cruel to do so, but unable, unwilling to stop himself.

He had to know.

"Why don't you want me here?" he asked, tone gentle, pleading.

And in that instant he saw her fond stare change. Saw it sour and harden, and saw the Martha he had known recede once more.

And he knew that it was somehow his fault.

"Later," she said curtly as she brought the car to a halt.

The Doctor turned his gaze outside and realized with a start that they were already at the house.

"As for now, out." With that she was out of the vehicle and running toward the building, in moments pounding on the door and yelling loudly.

The Doctor followed more slowly, meandering a bit as he came up with a plan of action.

Oh, she wanted him to leave, but it wouldn't be that simple. He still hadn't had the opportunity to scold Martha properly yet, what with all of her shouting. He decided that he would, generously, allow her finish with whatever nonsense she insisted had to be done here (he ignored the familiar voice that reminded him that he didn't have much of a say in the matter), but then he was going to demand answers.

And he was going to leave until he got them.

No matter how much she shouted.

Determined, the Doctor gave a rigid, self-affirming, nod and headed off to the TARDIS. All the better to lean against while crossing his arms and looking resolute.

Except, something was off.

In the distance he heard the pounding abruptly stop, interrupted by muttered cursing which was quickly cut short.

"Martha?" he heard Clive say, tone surprised. 

This was just odd.

"Mum, Dad!" The sound of fabric meeting and meshing, a family hug. "Thank God." 

Unbelievably odd. Wrong, even.

"Martha, sweetie." Francine, motherly and concerned. "What's the matter?"

So wrong, that the Doctor felt a slight panic begin to overtake him.

"Nothing, it's nothing," Martha insisted, reassuring.

A panic that was beginning to solidify into a genuine fear.

Suddenly there was a presence beside him, a hand on his shoulder and a serious voice in his ear.

"Where's the TARDIS?" Martha asked, more kindly than he had expected. 

"Right here," the Doctor said, staring at the ground below his feet. He glanced up, unable to hide his disbelief. "She's supposed to be right here."

He saw the sympathy in her eyes, heard the steel drain out of her tone. "Where is she, Doctor?"

"I…" He trailed off.

"We didn't see anything," Clive said, coming forward, his wife hot on his heels both wrapping his robes more firmly about themselves. "Didn't hear anything either."

"Doctor…" He felt the hand on his shoulder tighten reassuringly.

"She's gone," the Doctor said, feeling some part of him deflate and wither at the finality of the statement. "The TARDIS is gone."


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Wasteland (4/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 3,699   
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff   
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords," and casting spoilers for season four.  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the former travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: Man I'm slow. If I was you guys I'd kick me in the shin. -eyes mob of angry people with full kicking capabilities activated- Erm, I mean I would hug me with warm fuzziness and give me puppies! -nervous giggles- Yes, puppies and hugs. That'll show me. -runs away- Sorry for the long wait! **eponymousrose** (on LJ, AKA **StormMedicine** on FF) has helped me with her amazing beta skillz, and I bow before her awesomeness. Concrit is always appreciated, and thanks for your time!

---

For a few moments more there was a supportive silence, Martha's presence at his side a comforting weight that made the (temporary, he didn't dare imagine that the situation was anything but temporary) loss of the last piece of home a little easier to bear.

But it didn't last long. 

"Dammit," she said, resignation seeping through the word as she turned on her heel and made way for the back gate of the residence.

"Mum, Dad, get back into the house," Martha commanded with all the authority of one who knew exactly what they were doing and couldn't afford to allow others to get in their way. 

He had heard that tone before, but never from Martha. Where, then?

She turned to him, gesturing towards her already retreating parents. "You go with them. I'm going to check the perimeter."  
Shock slowly wearing off, the Doctor followed her instructions, walking into the house and quickly moving out of the way when Francine closed the door behind him. He then fixed his gaze on the wooden panels of the floor.

Gone. Every last piece of Gallifrey taken, stolen, from him. And he was still powerless to stop it.

"Doctor?" Clive asked, concern apparent in his tone. "Doctor, are you all right?"

"Don't fuss," his wife remarked glibly, patting the Time Lord's shoulder. "You'll get it back."

"Francine!"

"It's a big blue box, Clive! Whoever took it will get bored of it soon enough and drop it off on a corner somewhere." She stopped glaring at her husband to turn back to the Doctor, voice kind. "There's no sense in getting depressed about it now, Doctor. You've got to focus on what you can do to get it back, not mope on the fact that it's gone."

The Doctor felt himself nodding in agreement. Yes, right. After all, the TARDIS was useless to everyone else on this planet. What good would a time machine do someone who couldn't fly it, much less get inside? And who would destroy, would be _able_ to destroy the TARDIS anyway? After all, the combined hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through his ship's doors, and they had certainly tried.

The TARDIS would be fine, for a few hours, at least.

Or at least that was what he had to tell himself if he had any hope of figuring out how to get her back.

Allowing his remaining anxieties to fade to the background, the Doctor thought it best to turn his attentions to a mystery which appeared to be more solvable in the immediate future.

He abruptly lifted his gaze from the floor and stuck his hands in his pockets, staring inquisitively at Martha's family. "'Check the perimeter'?"

They stared blankly at him.

He rolled his eyes. Humans and their needing everything spelled out for them.

"Since when does Martha Jones, almost-doctor, check perimeters?"

Clive grinned smugly. "Since Doctor Martha Jones graduated, top of her class, and got hired by your friend, Captain Harkness."

"Torchwood?" The Doctor frowned. At least now he could recall where he had heard Martha's tone before. "Martha's working for Torchwood?"

He was going to have a serious talk with Jack about this. He wasn't fond of encouraging his companions to go off and risk their lives without him there to supervise.

"Worked," Francine clarified, features drawn. "She went back to the hospital. She's hired on full-time as a general practitioner and going to school now, studying cardiology as a specialty."

This made even less sense. Despite Jack's tendency to terrify those with any sense of personal boundaries or modesty, he didn't seem the type to abuse his employees, especially Martha. They had seemed to hit it off well, those two. "She was working for Torchwood and quit?"

Clive nodded. "Ten months ago."

"Why?"

Francine glared at him. "You sure you want to hear it from us?" she asked cheekily. "Don't want to wait and get the information from someone else?"

The Doctor sighed. "Given the chilly welcome I've been given, I have a feeling you two will be a much more receptive source." The Doctor raised an expectant eyebrow. 

Francine just rolled her eyes.

"About a year ago," Clive began, ignoring his wife and taking a deep breath. "Martha's fiancé was killed."

And the Doctor swore he felt a heart stop beating.

"Fiancé?" he choked out, still struggling with the revelation.

Fiancé. Martha had found someone, someone she loved, someone she was going to marry. 

And he'd died.

Francine nodded sadly. "Tom, Tom Milligan."

A dead man with a name who had held the heart of his friend in his hands.

And he hadn't known.

Martha's mother continued. "He was a paediatrician, worked in the hospital that Martha went to in order to take her final exam. They started dating not long after you left. Their wedding was going to be this October, but-" Like a barrier had been erected she stopped talking, unable to finish.

"He died," Clive supplied wearily, uttering the words like they were a defeat.

"You said he was killed." The Doctor stated, begging for answers.

A scholar of all history, but when it came to things that really mattered, the ordinary people that have the power to make or break their loved ones, Doctor knew nothing.

He needed more answers.

"A shooting," Clive confirmed. "Some kid high on drugs. Shot Tom and then turned the gun on himself."

He turned to Francine, understanding dawning. "This is why you thought she called." A statement, not a question, although there were still so many that he wanted, needed, to ask.

So much could happen in these short human lives, and each painful event left an undeniable, destructive impact. He felt like back-up called too late to a crisis, as if all he could do was stare at the aftermath of some great hurricane.

Francine nodded. "It's a year this Friday. I thought that maybe she'd give you a ring, maybe want to travel again…" She sighed, a miserable sound coming out of a grieving mother, and stared at him helplessly. "She hasn't been herself, Doctor."

The Doctor was used to preventing the disasters from happening, not picking up the pieces after they had done their damage.

Unfortunately, he would get no opportunity to better prepare himself for the task. In the next instant Martha was in the doorway, smiling reassuringly to the inhabitants of the house.

"Perimeter's fine," she said. "Stay inside tonight, and if anything happens call me. If I don't pick up-"

"Call Torchwood," Clive finished with the bored tone of one who had been given such instructions before.

"You still have Jack's number?"

"Yes," he affirmed. 

"Good." There was an awkward silence, Martha shifting on her feet while Francine and Clive seemed to be staring her down, willing her to acknowledge them.

But Martha, it seemed, wouldn't be having that. "Well. Bye, then."

She turned for the door only to be halted by her mother's voice.

"Martha, why don't you stay?" the woman pleaded. "For a few hours at least, if you're so worried?"

Martha smiled, jerking a thumb at the Doctor. "I've got to get him home."

He frowned. Home?

Martha tugged on his sleeve, obviously in a hurry to leave. "Come on, then." She motioned outside and then left, striding purposefully to her car.

He began to follow. 

"Doctor!" Francine called as he reached the door. She quickly pulled him forward for a hug, whispering into his ear, "Look after her," before releasing him.

He smiled comfortingly at her and then continued to make his way to Martha's car, thoughts whirling.

He would do his best to make sure that Martha was safe, of that there was no doubt.

But the Doctor thought it best not to let Francine Jones know that, in this case, he wasn't entirely certain he knew how.

--

Martha had known there was something wrong from the instant the Doctor got into the car. Moments after her parents' house faded from view, the Doctor began talking in that frantic way he had when trying to out-clever an opponent. It was a fantastic method, talking someone into making a mistake.

It just wasn't going to work on her.

She hoped that, eventually, he would process this fact, but until them she was forced to endure his babbling.

Babbling that she kept telling herself she hadn't missed at all in their years apart. 

"Taking me home, then?" he asked ten minutes into the journey, smiling in an overly eager fashion and bouncing a bit in his seat. "Bit domestic for my tastes, but I suppose I can't complain. Nice house, really." He frowned. "Although, I didn't see any teal. Most disappointing. I quite liked the teal."

A small pause.

"How do you have a house, again? Medical students don't live in houses. More like small holes in walls with carpeting and a window or two. Did Jack give you the money?" 

Martha rolled her eyes. The all powerful Time Lord sitting in her passenger seat, centuries old and capable of bending space and time to his will, didn't have any idea how to be tactful.

"Mum told you about Torchwood, then."

"Doesn't seem to get the meaning of 'classified,' does she?" the Doctor responded cheerfully. "But no matter." He waved a hand dismissively, turning to better stare at her from his chair. "Tell me about it then. Get any good perks? Vacation time and all that?"

She snorted. "Not so much, no."

Jack, although her very dear friend, became a different man when at Torchwood. The fun-loving, flirtatious charmer she knew and loved was still there, but he was buried deep under layers of authority and obligation, the burden of responsibility. And with that weight upon his shoulders, Jack wasn't exactly the most lenient of taskmasters.

Not that any of this added responsibility decreased the flirting for which Martha was, secretly, grateful.

"And what about salary?" the Doctor persisted. "Must have been hefty, to get you a posh place like that house."

She suppressed another snort and attempted to send him a serious look. "Torchwood Three operates on a more economical scale than its predecessor, actually."

"Really?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, genuine interest highlighting his features.

And since she hadn't been able to talk about it before, since she had been so lonely for so very long, since she had missed him, talking to him, being with him, Martha told him everything. "Bad medical equipment, no outside resources, _Owen_." She gave a small, internal shudder at the name. "And that's just when we were working in the hub." She suppressed a sigh, throwing him a sardonic look. "It was like being with you, but without all of the perks. No psychic paper, no friends waiting for us, no grand and epic salvation at the end of every day. But," she grinned then, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. "There was still a lot of running."

He returned her smile, and, like a switch had been flipped, she felt her insides turn cold. "There's always that."

It took her more time than she wanted to admit to deny the compulsion to search for the gun.

"Yeah," she said, swallowing nervously and turning to the road once more. "Always running." She ignored the cold sweat that began to break out over her skin.

"Sounds dreadful," the Doctor remarked, oblivious as he leaned back in his seat, arms crossed languidly under his head. He looked at her casually, asking in a carefully inquisitive tone, "That why you quit?"

And it was that tone, the one that people used when they asked questions they already knew the answers to, that led Martha to discover what was wrong with the Doctor.

"She told you about Tom too, didn't she?" 

Because the Doctor didn't do well in the face of grief. Couldn't handle the emotional strain, didn't know how to cope with an overwhelming and terrifying sense of despair, despite his own long, painful centuries of practice.

The Doctor, brilliant though he might have been, was not such a quick study as Martha. 

"I'm sorry," he began, the first phrase of a long-since memorized mantra. "I'm so-"

"You didn't know him, Doctor," Martha interrupted, eyes fixed on the road, refusing to acknowledge the sympathetic, inadequate, look she knew was being sent her way. "You don't get to be sorry."

And, for perhaps the first time since she had met him, the Doctor was reduced to silence.

Which was all for the best, really, since Martha had no desire to talk about Tom. About the way that his hair felt after it had just been washed, how he would lay out her side of the bed for her every night before she went to sleep, the way he would hold doors open for her and sing to her in public.

She didn't want to think about the way that she could spend hours running her fingers over his collar bone, enraptured with his every reaction. How she would instinctually wrap her arm around his waist at every given opportunity and how the warm weight of his own arm resting on her shoulders would meet her in response. She didn't want to think about how he made her feel as if she were the only woman, person, on Earth and that he needed and wanted no one else.

Martha didn't want to explain that she didn't need, didn't want, the universe. 

She only wanted to be seen.

And Tom had seen her. 

And so she didn't want to remember the way she had watched him die, the feel of his blood on her hands or the sound of his last rattling breath.

She treasured the silence that lasted until they had reached the house, Tom's house, once more.

"You can stay with me tonight," she told the Doctor as she turned off the car. "But tomorrow we're finding the TARDIS and you're going back." With that she resolutely opened the car door, leaving the vehicle and returning to the house, hoping that the Doctor wouldn't question her.

But of course he did.

"Back?" he asked as he quickly followed her progress, nearly tripping over his feet in an effort to keep up.

"To wherever it is you came from before you decided to pop up here again," she told him, struggling in the dark to find the right key to open the front door with.

"I do not _pop_."

"Really?" She snorted, looking up from her task to scowl at him. "Then what else do you call showing up at one in the morning at the front door?" She turned back to the keys, fumbling with the pieces of metal.

"How many times do I need to remind you of the small but important detail of you calling me?" He glared at her, shrugging dramatically. "My services were requested! I can't help it if you phoned at an inappropriate hour."

She stopped with her mission to point an accusing finger at him. "First, how many times do I need to remind you of 'the small but important detail' of _Leo_ calling you, not me."

The Doctor merely gaped.

"Second, he called over a week ago and he did it in the afternoon," she snapped in conclusion, turning back to the keys. How hard could it be to find the correct one?

"Oh, right." The Doctor pulled at an ear awkwardly. "A week ago."

Ignoring this small display of guilt in favor of more immediate and practical worries, Martha made an incomprehensible noise of frustration at the small metal keys in her hand, nearly throwing them to the ground in exasperation.

She let out a strained bark of a laugh, feeling her shoulders slump in dejection. The great Doctor Martha Jones, former defender and savior of the world, defeated by a locked door.

And all she wanted to do was sleep.

Almost as if he felt her desperation, the Doctor wordlessly dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, unlocking and opening the door in one swift motion after a quick _hum_ of his device. 

For several moments Martha simply stared in wonder at the gadget, the miniature machine which had saved her life countless times, that had unlocked the hidden wonders of the universe and that she had nearly forgotten about in the past two years.

Anger suddenly cooled, Martha looked up to the man, the Time Lord, holding the tool.

"Thank you," she said, on the threshold to the house, knowing full well that she didn't mean that one door alone. 

The Doctor gave an understanding nod of acknowledgment and then moved on.

He had never been one to linger on the lives and civilizations he had saved.

"Why you don't want me here, Martha?" he asked, voice smooth and pleading. "It's been two years without a word. Why have you waited so long? Why haven't you contacted me before now?" He hesitated a moment. "Why not a year ago, when-"

"Because you're dangerous, Doctor," Martha interjected, using every ounce of her formidable will power to stop her voice from faltering, her gaze from wavering, as she said it.

This, she felt, was something that he needed to really hear.

"Because wherever you go, disaster has a tendency to linger." She looked him steadily in the eye. "And the people I love have suffered from that long enough."

Courage and resolve failing at the shocked expression on his face, she made a motion to enter the house, to escape his devastated gaze and to, perhaps, sleep.

Only to be stopped by a firm grip on her shoulder.

"You aren't just talking about your family during that year, are you?" the Doctor demanded, bending his head and forcing her to look at him. "You're talking about something else. Someone else." He frowned, searching her features, looking for something, for truth.

"Your fiancé." He pulled away from her. "You think he was killed because of me."

"I didn't say that," she denied instinctually, already knowing that it was too late.

"But you think it," he alleged, stepping closer yet again. "Don't you, Martha?"

She looked at the pavement of the entrance to the house.

"Martha!"

"Yes," she admitted, ashamed for doing so, the accusation weighing heavily in the air.

In the moments that followed, the silence seemed oppressive.

"How?" he finally choked out, and Martha looked up to see an expression of complete disbelief on his face. "How could you ever think that I would endanger you, your happiness-?"

"I don't!" she reassured him quickly. "Doctor, I don't." She found herself grasping onto his arms lightly, staring at him intently, every ounce of compassion within her crying out to him. "You'd never do it purposefully, never harm the people that matter to me." Her grasp tightened slightly. "But don't you see?"

She gave him a shake, trying to force the truth into him, to make him understand by her gentle persuasion. "You don't have to." She focused her gaze on his. "Your enemies will do it for you."

The Doctor responded by raising an eyebrow. "My enemies?"

Feeling as if she had been burned, Martha quickly pulled away from him.

"Martha-"

It was always the same.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you? Just like Jack and Torchwood did." She let out a bitter laugh, crossing her arms in front of her chest and staring levelly at him. "Fine."

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak.

"No, it's all right," she insisted. "I don't need you to believe me. I just need you to leave, without asking any questions, once we find the TARDIS again."

The Doctor sighed, tugging his ear quickly before imploring her. "Martha, I don't think you're crazy, really I don't." He smiled supportively. "I just think that you might be mistaken."

He held up a halting hand to stop the protest that was forming on Martha's lips.

"Yes, I have enemies, but few left on Earth, and of them none are aware of you, much less your family or your fiancé." He laughed, nudging her gently with his shoulder. "Besides, who would want to hurt me? I'm far too charming, clever and kind for anyone to ever wish ill upon."

It was in the next instant that Martha saw a small red laser moving frantically about the Doctor's chest. 

"Get down!" With a shove she pushed the Time Lord to the ground, hearing a distinct _bang_ accompanied by the shattering of glass of the door treatment above her.

Allowing a year of Jack's training to take over, she grabbed the scruff of the Doctor's jacket with one hand, pushing him closer to the ground. She pulled and guided him into the house on hands and knees, ignoring the sounds of bullets flying as they made their way into the hallway, the feel of glass as it cut into her elbows and knees.

She looked behind her briefly, checking to see if her companion was safe, and found the Doctor wide-eyed but unharmed by the bullets.

It seemed as if the Doctor, the only remaining Lord of Time within the universe, had been mistaken.

After making her way to the hallway's side table, she briefly fumbled inside the drawer. Relief reached her as her fingers met the feeling cold, solid metal after a few seconds of frenzied searching. Martha pulled the thing out of the drawer, also grabbing the box of bullets that she kept hidden in the potted plant next to the table, before crouching low on the floor once more.

The Doctor watched her with a kind of horror as she loaded the gun Jack had given her on the first day of work. 

"Charming, clever and kind you may be, Doctor," she yelled over the din of the flying bullets that were destroying a house which hadn't been her home for a year. "But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who want you dead." She cocked the gun, jerking her head towards the rear entrance of the house. "Come on, there's a back way out. Stay low."

The Doctor followed silently in her wake.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: Wasteland (5/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 2,998  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords."   
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: Eternal thanks must go, once more, to the magnificent **eponymousrose**, who is the beta queen (it's official. She's got a crown and everything) and without whom none of this would make much sense. As you've probably noticed, up until this point I've had chapters done (mostly) in advance. (Yes, this has been me 'updating fast' -hangs head in shame-) I'm hoping on getting a big chunk of writing done within the next few weeks, but the posting on this puppy might be a bit slow(er) for a bit. Sorry for the many delays, guys! That being said, feedback of any sort is always appreciated and thanks for your time!

---

"It started with the shooting a year ago, and at first I didn't suspect anything besides the obvious."

Martha was walking ahead of the Doctor at a pace he found himself struggling to match despite his longer legs. 

"A kid high on drugs, a horrible accident that resulted in two deaths," she threw over her shoulder, her gun disappearing into the waist of her jeans as they went out into a crowded street.

That was London for you. One thing that hadn't changed throughout the twentieth century was the fact that it could be three in the morning and yet the streets would still be crowded.

"It wasn't easy to accept," Martha continued, shrugging the familiar red leather jacket onto her shoulders and covering the hostler of the pistol. This was the jacket she had grabbed along with the backpack she was currently slinging over her shoulder when they had crawled out of the back door of her dead fiancé's house as gunmen attempted to blow it, or them, to bits.

And although the Doctor had often heard of unwarranted aggression against buildings, he somehow doubted that the house was the true target of the gunmen's fury.

Not that he was saying that Martha was right about _his_ being the target of said fury, of course.

Just that she might be a bit more right than he originally suspected.

"But I did," she finished. Martha's eyes were in constant motion, scanning people as they passed by, as they crossed the street, as they pulled away in taxis. She was watching the buildings too, eyes glancing upwards through windows, looking carefully at roofs, underground entrances. The trained, watchful, eye of Torchwood, hard at work.

Or maybe, the trained eye of one who had walked a broken and bleeding earth for a year.

The Doctor didn't know how he felt about that, Martha Jones turned into an agent of alien control. He liked to ignore the fact that it was he, not Jack, who had instigated that change. Now the development had simply been highlighted for him, the ease with which the medical student handled a gun terrifying the Time Lord. The Doctor was going to have a serious chat with Jack about that, as he knew full well that he was the only source she could have obtained it from.

Martha Jones was a doctor, and doctors should never need guns.

"Anything else would have been wishful thinking," Doctor Martha Jones said as she turned a corner, checking to see that he was keeping up. "Hoping that Tom died for some greater purpose, that it wasn't just a stupid mistake that could have been avoided."

He thought her heard her voice lose a bit of its certainty as she looked away, scanning the area once more.

"But then it happened again. Or almost." Her tone showed no signs of weakness now, and he almost believed he had imagined the quiver. "A month later Tish's flat was set on fire." She let out a bitter laugh. "An arson, the police said, but with no suspects. And it wasn't her entire building either, just her flat. Luckily she had been at work, special that night for an event." Another lifeless chuckle. "If it hadn't been for that stupid diner…" She trailed off, completely unwilling to finish the statement.

The Doctor didn't press her. He knew where such a tale would have ended, had circumstances only been the slightest bit different. He had plenty of stories like those himself.

"Where is she?" he asked, remembering the tall, pretty, woman who had helped them stop Lazarus not so long ago. Just years. "Tish?"

"Moved to the States," Martha said blandly as they reached a street corner, waiting for the light to change. "We got in a fight not long after that." She looked at the cars passing in front of them, the buildings blocking out the sky, the people waiting next to them. Anywhere but at him. "I told her she wouldn't get anywhere here, in London. Not if she really wanted to make something of herself. Said that she was being a fool, that she was scared of becoming her own person."

The light changed and Martha began striding into the street.

The Doctor didn't move, feeling the wave of people move past him as his feet remained glued to the pavement. "You made that fight happen, didn't you?" he accused quietly, watching as Martha turned to him guiltily. She had thought she could fool him and maybe, if he hadn't been so familiar with the careful art of the unsaid, she would have been able to get away with it. "You did it on purpose." Shock kept him from moving.

Martha had made Tish leave, had made her angry just to get her to go, to flee London, go somewhere she'd be safe. And he knew it because he had, in the past, done the same thing. Hurt the one he cared for to keep her safe, tricked her to make her stay away, to stay where she couldn't be harmed by forces far more malevolent than his own clumsy and well meant manipulations. Of course, he thought with an amused ruefulness, he had never been able to fool Rose as thoroughly as he had wanted to.

But Martha had obviously mastered it. The Doctor had seen the dedication Tish had that night in the church, and he knew that she would have noticed when something was wrong, wouldn't have allowed Martha to push her aside like she had done with the rest of her family. Tish would have demanded explanations and answers, would have created problems for Martha's plan of isolationism. She, unlike the rest of her family, wouldn't have allowed Martha to protect her.

And so Martha had done the only thing drastic enough to keep Tish safe from harm. She had made her sister hate her, made her closest ally abandon her, and had been left completely alone.

And the Doctor had never had the strength to make Rose hate him.

The Doctor didn't realize he still wasn't moving until he felt small fingers tentatively seize his own, pausing for a moment before pulling him along, guiding him through the mass of bodies.

Always so uncertain, Martha Jones. One would hope that, after saving the world and all, she'd be a bit more inclined to take charge of things.

And then the Doctor remembered the gun Martha had tucked in the waist of her jeans, inches away from where his hand was being clutched tightly in hers.

Maybe it wasn't taking charge of things, then. Maybe it was taking charge of him.

"A week after Tish's apartment caught I was coming back from Tom's grave." She paused briefly and gave her head a small shake. "Anyway, I got hit by a truck near the cemetery," she continued calmly, still pulling him along, grip gentle but firm around his fingers. "They sped off before I could get a good look at it or who was inside, but I knew this time that it wasn't an accident. When I was in hospital I called Torchwood and quit." She sent him a small, resigned, smile over her shoulder. "They didn't say it, but I knew the team didn't believe me, and who could blame them? I was so frazzled, wasn't sleeping, I almost didn't believe me either. Not to mention I was injured, and all things considered I was becoming more of a chore to have about than an asset. Besides, the longer I stayed the more likely it would be that headquarters would be discovered." She gave a self affirming not. "It was for the best, really, all of it. I stopped speaking to my family after I got better, began breaking off contact." Another nod. "All for the best."

But it hadn't been, not at all. "Martha-" 

But she seemed determined not to let him say it. "Since then my food's been poisoned," she interrupted before he could get the words out, quickening their pace. "I've been hit once more by a car, the house was broken into twice, Leo's best friend at work was killed in an 'unfortunate accident,' two of my patients have died without reason, and I've been mugged once or twice." Said like she couldn't quite remember, like she had forgotten, even if they both knew that forgetting wouldn't have been possible.

She stopped suddenly, her eyes fixated on the back of the hand that wasn't gripping his, the limb held out in front of her and being examined as if it belonged to someone else. 

The Doctor came closer, glancing over her shoulder to look as well, noticing the odd indentations, the unnatural arch that jutted out from under the skin. "They broke four of the bones in my hand." 

A doctor's no good without her hands.

She briskly straightened herself, abruptly releasing him and crossing her arms in front of her chest, hiding her hands as she faced him. "And so you see, Doctor, it didn't take me too long, after those first few months, to figure out that they were after you."

Still reeling from the knowledge of everything he had missed, the Doctor didn't follow the comment. "After me?"

"They didn't kill me," she clarified, staring him straight in the eye. "They didn't want me dead, they wanted me scared." She took a breath. "They wanted me to call you."

And in that instant of recognition, as all of what had happened slowly came to focus (Martha's fiancé, Tish, Torchwood, the gun, her family, her patients, Tom's house, the poison, the cars, her hands), the Doctor became angry. "Then why didn't you?" he demanded, exercising as much restraint he could muster, refusing to yell or grip the woman in front of him by the shoulders and shake her until she told him why. Why she had allowed herself and those she loved to suffer for so long, why she hadn't come to him for help.

"Forgive me, Doctor," she replied, an icy tone matching his barely restrained fury. "But I'm not used to asking the people I care about to die for me."

"I could have stopped it," he insisted, running a hand through his hair in frustration, trying not to tug at the odds and ends that met his fingers before throwing his arm down in frustration. "I could have helped!"

"Like you are now?" she asked sarcastically. "Bringing them to my parents' front door? To Tom's house? Giving them the TARDIS?"

"And what about all the other people who have died? Your patients, your brother's friend? If I had been here they wouldn't have been killed!"

"You don't know that!"

"And what about you, Martha?" he continued, ignoring her. His eyes went to the hand still hidden under her arm, the disfigured limb representing far more than broken bones. "If you called me I could have stopped them from doing all of this!"

She saw the direction of his gaze and moved her hands behind her back, stepping forward and glaring up at him. "I was protecting you!" she stated fiercely, eyes hard as she stared at him.

And that was the problem. "I never asked you to protect me!"

"Didn't you?" she demanded, furious for an instant before she took a breath and seemed to deflate in front of him. In the next moment her fierce anger cooled to exhaustion, and she looked at him in a manner that was almost helpless.

"Didn't you, Doctor?"

And with that question, with her eyes locked to his and the evidence of the damage he had caused given to him in the terms of lives lost, the Doctor realized that he had.

The Judoon, the mutants in New York, Lazarus in the Church, the space station and the sun, 1913, 1969, and the year that wasn't.

From the moment they had met he had made Martha Jones fight his battles for him, and she still was doing it, two years after leaving.

She seemed to notice his fury change, but instead of being pleased, Martha's face morphed into an expression of annoyance.

"It doesn't matter," she said smartly. "The past is the past and it can't be changed." She let out a large sigh. "We're here now and we both have to deal with that."

Knowing the issue was far from resolved, but rather concerned by the fact that they had been standing still for so long after having recently been shot at, the Doctor thought it best to get along with this dealing process, before they were subjected to more attempts of bodily harm. "And where is 'here,' exactly?" he asked, swallowing his anger and guilt as he glanced around the darkened and empty street with an odd sense of having been there before.

Martha allowed a bitter smirk, turning towards the gated off building they were standing next to. "Not-so-recently renovated flats." She pointed to his pocket. "You want to open this?" she asked, gesturing to the gate.

The Doctor obediently took out the sonic screwdriver and distractedly buzzed it at the gate as he frowned at the structure in front of them. "Didn't this used to be your building?"

"Yep. Got shut down after my flat went up in flames."

The Doctor pushed opened the door and raised an eyebrow at her. "And no one's bought it in two years?"

"When a flat randomly blows itself up with no reason identifiable to human technology, its market value tends to go down," she muttered with a smirk, pushing ahead of him and gesturing to lock the gate once more.

He dutifully changed the setting on the sonic screwdriver and began to relock the entrance.

There was a moment's pause as she allowed him to work before she asked, "You've still got your key don't you?" 

"My key?" he asked as he finished with the lock, looking at her in confusion.

"The one with the perception filter?" 

"Oh, that." He frowned, putting the sonic screwdriver away before he plunged both hands into his jacket pockets, riffling through all of the items he had stored there through the centuries. A yoyo or two, some jelly babies, a towel (you always need a towel, you know), oh and is that where his recorder went?

After a few more minutes of riffling, during which Martha struggled to keep a straight face (for all of their traveling with him, humans never did really get the whole 'bigger on the inside' thing), he pulled out the key with its small piece of twine victoriously. "Ah, there it is."

Martha grinned at his overly triumphant expression. "Put it on, then." She strode ahead of him confidently, walking up a nearby staircase and heading up to the second floor, where her flat had been.

"And what about you?" the Doctor questioned as he followed her.

She pulled at a piece of string she had hidden beneath her shirt and jacket. "I've been keeping it on all the time for the past few months, except when I'm at work." She stopped at the door to her old flat, turning the knob and roughly pushing it open, struggling a bit against the dried paint.

She smiled grimly at the stark white (no teal) walls. "Home sweet home." She let out a sigh and wandered into the flat, dropping her bag at the entryway and striding purposefully into the room. "We should be able to stay here." She entered the largest room of the three-room, plus loo, apartment and gestured for him to make himself comfortable.

Looking around at the empty space, the Doctor shrugged and sat on the carpet, leaning against a wall and crossing his legs out in front of him.

"I haven't seen anyone hanging about here except for some homeless folks, and it's locked. Thanks to the sonic screwdriver we should be safe, for a while at least."

He found himself nodding along, startled by having so little to say or do. He wasn't used to following someone else's lead.

He was still nodding when Martha began to retreat toward a door at the other end of the room.

"Wait, where are you going?" he asked, surprising himself with the note of alarm in his question.

She turned to face him. "To bed." 

He raised an eyebrow. "Isn't there more we should talk about?"

"I'll give you more information tomorrow. I've been researching, keeping my eyes open, paying attention." She let out a small breath, looking incredibly tired. "But that can wait." 

"Why not now?" he pushed, needing to take action. He wasn't about to let events happen without him. Not again. "This needs to stop, Martha. This should have stopped a long time ago." 

She gave a small smile. "It's been a few months for you Doctor. I've been dealing with this for a year. It can wait." 

"For what?"

"Sleep." She sighed, seeming to be resentful of the word. "I have to sleep."

"The sooner we start-"

"Going somewhere tomorrow?" she asked, temper obviously snapping. "No? Then we wait." She began moving once more. "Like I said, I need to sleep."

"Over there?" He pointed to the opposite end of the living area, where she was headed.  
Martha shook her head. "In the bedroom." 

"But why?" He grinned. "Carpet in there a bit comfier?" 

She reached the door, opening it and giving him an almost bitter smile as she stepped through the threshold. "Thought I'd give you your privacy and space, Doctor."

And hadn't that been what he had always wanted from Martha Jones?

But Martha didn't say that. Instead she stopped smiling, obviously sensing how insincere it was, and simply shook her head gently before saying, "Goodnight." With that she closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world and going to a place where he couldn't reach her.

A part of the Doctor wondered if she had been in that room all along.


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: Wasteland (6?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 3,575  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords."  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: Sorry for the long delay, yet again. sheepish Some day I'll be consistent, honest. I've gotten over the big hump of the next chapter and have made a resolution to write every night, so I'll hopefully get the next bit out relatively quickly. No beta, and concrit is loved in any case, so hit me with your best shot! Thanks for your time.

--

_This time he's already dead. The blood is already on her hands and even the illusion that she can save him is taken away from her._

_She stands up and starts walking, her purse held loosely in her limp hand, black dress covered in red blood that she can almost feel dripping down the fabric._

_There are footsteps behind her and she turns, seeing two hulking forms, sinister and covered in shadows, only bright lights for eyes shining through with harmful intent._

_She runs again, but not fast enough._

_She's pushed against the brick wall, one body attached to each arm, feels her bag ripped from her fingers just before stars dance along her vision, the world spins and everything explodes with a snap._

_Bones of the hand. Carpal bones, proximal row: scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform. Distal row: trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate. Then the metacarpal bones extending in three distinct phalanges: proximal, middle, distal._

_Snap._

_Her purse is pressed back into a swelling grip, contents untouched. Fingers are wrapped painfully around the small object by cruel taskmasters, unsympathetic as she hears an agonized scream echo along the alleyway._

_It's only when the figures disappear back into the shadows, even the lights of their eyes losing substance in the dark, that she looks down and notes that the hand with her bag held loosely in its limp, deformed grasp is her own._

--

Martha woke up panting, suppressing screams and bringing her clenched hand in front of her face, looking for the proof of the pain she still felt shooting from her fingertips to the rest of her body. With a start she realized that her injured hand was gripping the holster of the gun she had left beside her while she slept.

Thank God Jack had ordered her to always keep the safety on.

She painfully unclenched her fingers from around the pistol, all but throwing the weapon across the room in an effort to separate herself from it. Ever since the Doctor had given her that horrified look when she had retrieved it back at Tom's house, the thing had felt awkward and wrong in her hands.

She turned back to her limb, trying to assess what damage was real and what was imagined. After a few moments of blinking she was able to see the shadow of the break in the near-morning light. The slight twist, dip and scar in the otherwise angular and ordinary hand, almost impossible to notice without a close enough examination.

Not much, not much at all, but enough to sever a few nerves, create a few tremors. Enough to keep Doctor Martha Jones out of surgery.

Happily, Martha had never wanted to be a surgeon. Had never wanted to see her patients opened up before her and laid bare, reduced to nothing more than the sum and functioning of their organs, their piping. Not that she hadn't admired the surgeons she had been taught by throughout her education, but to her doctoring went beyond what those brilliant physicians could provide their patients. Healing was so much more than a few nips and cuts, some knitted-in stitches and metal plates.

Besides, Martha had never been a fan of the sight of blood on her hands.

Really, all things considered, she hadn't lost much at all, and the situation and its results could have been far worse.

But, even knowing all of that, it didn't mean that the loss didn't sting.

Martha allowed herself a fleeting moment of self-pity. She didn't want to, never planned to permit herself the time it took to partake in the useless pastime. Pity, after all, helped no one, least of all herself. But, as such unpleasant and unhelpful emotions had the tendency of doing, pity had mastered the ability of sneaking up on her when she was least prepared for it, when she was least capable of defending herself from the attacks of the debilitating sentiments. Martha knew that it was a stupid, pointless waste of time and energy that would have been better spent elsewhere. But that didn't mean that it didn't make her feel a bit better, every now and again, if only for a tiny instant.

In Martha's weak moments, she often wished she had called the Doctor. And at her very weakest, she would blame him for not calling her himself. For allowing two years to pass by without notice or concern, for not knowing that she needed him through sheer alien might, and for making her care for him to the point that she would let her family and herself suffer rather than go to him, just to keep him safe.

But in the next instant Martha's time for self-pity would be over, and she would get back to living the life she, not the Doctor, had constructed for herself. Because, despite everything she felt about (for) the Time Lord, he wasn't the one to blame for the things that had happened in the past years. The people who had been hurt, who had died, the rifts that had been created and seemed as if they were impossible to bridge again – none of them had been the Doctor's fault. If Martha had put herself in danger for him, she had done it willingly, and would have with or without his request. And if others had suffered for her blind, foolish devotion, then the person that she should really blame for their distress was herself.

Except not.

Because the ones truly responsible for all this pain were still out there. The people who had killed Tom were waiting, looking for the Doctor, and they needed to be stopped before more innocent people were harmed. (She suppressed the part of herself that wanted them punished, wanted to see them suffer for all they had done.)

Conveniently, Martha knew just the man to hunt down and thwart those villainous types. And luckily enough, he happened to be lounging about, no doubt restless and bored, in the next room. All she had to do was to stop trying to protect a man, Time Lord, determined to get himself into trouble whenever possible, and reach out for his help.

Because somehow when she had been with him all of this saving of the world stuff had felt doable, had felt like fun, even. But on her own, without a hand to hold, even rescuing herself seemed near impossible.

Martha had missed the Doctor. His childish antics, his endless babbling, the way he would tug on his ear when he felt awkward or how he would ruffle his hair when stressed. She missed it all. And she realized for the first time that in spite the year that wasn't, the training with Torchwood and all of the time spent on her own, perhaps she still needed him too, now more than ever.

After all, what was the point in saving the world if you couldn't have a bit of fun while you were at it?

Martha took a deep breath, running her hand over her sweaty face and damp hair before bringing it down to massage the aches out of its counterpart. She knew from past experience that it would burn for a few hours at best, a few days at worst, and in either case it would be long enough to remind her of how fortunate she was that the damage hadn't been worse. She flexed the hand carefully, clinically noting each jab of pain with accompanying winces, assessing and weighing the functioning ability of the limb. After a few minutes of the delicate maneuvering of her fingers, she determined that the hand would still be useful, if a little stiff. Her entire body was a bit sore, truth be told, what with the sleeping on thinly carpeted floor.

It wasn't that she hadn't slept on (and through) much worse in the past (while traveling as a fugitive across the world, finding any place to sleep, let alone a comfortable one, became a surprisingly creative endeavor), but when given the choice Martha would have much preferred a nice fluffy mattress to the stiff carpeting.

But, beggars can't be choosers, and as she was currently fleeing from some unknown menace trying to kill or capture her alien friend, Martha didn't think she was in much of a position to complain.

Resolved to get on with getting on with said alien friend, to find said menace, and to continue to happily ignore the dreams that had the habit of awaking her so unpleasantly, Martha got to her feet. After a bit of stretching and an admirable attempt not to smell herself following a night spent on the run, Martha faced the door that separated her from the Time Lord with a smile.

Already, it felt just like old times.

She entered the room with the same cheery grin. "Morning," she said, making her way to the bag she had dropped off near the door the night earlier.

The Doctor looked up from his spot on the floor, leaning against the wall with his legs crossed in front of him. The shell of an old computer rested on his lap, a multitude of random wires twisting in and out of the gray paneling with his screwdriver buzzing merrily above the mess.

"Morning?" he asked, apparently confused at her abrupt change in temperament from the night before.

He obviously didn't have nearly enough appreciation for the curing wonders of sleep.

Attempting to stealthily mask this confusion (and failing horribly) he coughed and rapidly shifted his puzzled gaze to the lone window in the small apartment, gesturing to the muted stream of light making it through the blinds. "Technically speaking, anyway. Aren't you humans supposed to get eight hours of rest, what with the whole extended brain activity, extensive physical exertion and long overdue crash from excessive caffeine consumption?"

"Medical student. The normally acceptable amounts of sleep do not apply."

He blinked. "Oh, right." Satisfied with her response, he went back to contently buzzing the sonic screwdriver.

It seemed as though medical students were understood to be creatures routinely deprived of sleep as in due course of their conditioning throughout the universe.

With backpack in hand she flopped down on the floor next to him, peering over his shoulder at the mass of metal and wire. "What are you doing?"

"Making a tracking device. Remember 1969?" He stuck the screwdriver in his mouth and pounded on the old frame in a clearly sophisticated construction method.

Martha winced in sympathy. "Timey-wimey stuff."

He nodded and snatched the screwdriver from between his teeth. "Exactly." He tugged on a few wires and pushed some buttons until the heap on his lap started to faintly hum in an almost pained manner. "Went out and found an old computer, radio, some spare wires, and tada." He beamed at the new tracking device with all the pride of a parent watching his child's first steps.

She couldn't stop herself from sharing his enthusiasm, grinning just as widely and ignoring the less than comforting sounds as she eagerly looked at the new piece of equipment.

She really had missed the wonder in all of this.

"And what does it say?"

The Doctor eyed the spare parts intently, pounding on the battered frame once more.

Martha swore she heard the device cough.

After some more jabs and a couple of moments of concentrated study he wearily replied, "Nothing." He let out a sigh and tugged at his hair. "Whoever has the TARDIS hasn't used her." He sent her an ominous look. "Yet."

Martha glanced from the Doctor with his concerned stare to the machine, still humming away and starting to shake with the strain. Neither sight was terribly reassuring. "Do you think that means they haven't gotten in?"

He shook his head. "They couldn't have. I don't give out TARDIS keys willy-nilly. There's a handful of people on this planet who could get into her, and none of them would harm her even if they did."

"So does that mean the TARDIS is safe?"

"Relatively."

She gave him an exasperated stare. "Relatively?"

"I can't be certain about everything, can I?" he defended himself. "I've just made a timey-wimey device out of the technological equivalent to sticks and yarn! You've got to give me some credit."

Martha smiled in spite of herself. "Yes, that was very well done, Doctor."

He looked incredibly pleased with the praise.

"But what happens if someone does start meddling?"

He sighed. "_If_ - " He looked and her fiercely. "And this is a very big 'if,' a monumental 'if,' in fact. An 'if' roughly the size of the Great Wall of China."

She nodded her understanding at the largeness of this particular 'if.'

"_If_ someone managed to get inside of the TARDIS, and _if_ they could find a way to operate her, they would have all of space and time at their fingertips."

If Martha hadn't traveled with the Doctor as she had, hadn't known him as she did, hadn't seen him as the only other Time Lord left alive died in his arms, she might not have noticed the flicker of dread that flashed through him with the statement.

Not solely concern for the universe. That sort of dread was the type the Doctor had become used to throughout his travels, a sort of terror he could cope with, even use to his advantage. No, this fear was all the more terrifying because it was for himself, made him vulnerable in a manner that was so very human. Because Martha knew that without the TARDIS the Doctor was as helpless as the rest of them. She had seen it, had lived through his withdrawal from the universe, from his last piece of home, and she knew that to the Doctor, a life lived without the stars was no life at all.

It was then that Martha realized that the Doctor had lost the final fragment of his former life to an enemy he couldn't even name, had found himself completely at the mercy of this unknown foe, and all the while she had done little but berate him for a situation he had done nothing to create.

The shame of it nearly paralyzed her.

But Martha was a doctor, and almost instinctively she felt herself reaching out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Not something we want, then."

He looked from her hand to her smiling face, his own features breaking out into a small grin. "No, preferably not."

For an instant they remained in that position, smiling gently at each other, a moment suspended in an odd, almost misplaced, sense of peace.

But in a matter of seconds the Doctor had sprung to his feet, turning back to Martha and raising an eyebrow in question. "So tell me what you know, Martha Jones."

Because the Doctor couldn't sit still, couldn't stop running long enough to accept any sort of reassurance. Besides, she should have long since learned that a man, a Time Lord, like him had no use for the comfort of Martha Jones.

Martha swallowed the emotions, the ones she should have grown out of by now, and straightened her back against the wall. With a deep breath she began to recall the facts that she had spent the past months meticulously gathering. "Activities started a year ago. Whoever's doing all of this has the money and resources to do it quietly, and they've been planning it for a long while."

The Doctor frowned at her. "'A long while'?"

"One of my patients," she explained. "Florence. She died slowly, over the past eight months. We didn't know what was causing it at the time, but she kept getting worse, in spite of everything we were doing. Later we found out that she was getting too much of her incredibly expensive medication." She laughed bitterly. "That the treatment that was supposed to be helping her was what ended up killing her."

The Time Lord began to pace in front of her. "Are you certain that it was the people we're looking for who did this? Certain that it wasn't a mistake?"

Martha stared at him levelly. "Yes." She was certain. More than certain.

But Martha felt no need to go into the inquiry into her professional conduct concerning the death of a patient, the review of her every verbal command and official signature, the checking and re-checking of her every action, every diagnosis, every administration of medication and every thought during those long months. There was no reason for to explain to the Doctor why she was certain that she, and her staff, weren't responsible for that good woman's death.

Even if the Doctor had never wanted her comfort, he had always trusted her judgment.

"All right." And that was that. "Well, that's something. Not much of something, but something."

"That's_everything_, Doctor."

He raised his eyebrow in the way that let her know that he thought he was humoring her. "Is it?"

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever's doing this can't be an alien, can it? I mean, it could, but why wouldn't they have transported me or something yet? Why kill using medication if you had some other untraceable alien poison?"

The Doctor's eyebrow was promptly put back in its proper place.

Martha grinned in smug satisfaction. "It's a human doing all of this Doctor, a very rich human, granted, but a human nonetheless. And they want you."

"Or the TARDIS," he reminded her, still pacing.

"But you all but said that they can't use the TARDIS without you." She shook her head emphatically. "No. It's you they want. It has to be, I'm certain of it."

The Doctor said nothing, continuing his rapid stride in front of Martha, brow furrowed in thought. He obviously still didn't believe her entirely, about their foe being human or the reason for the TARDIS' kidnapping.

Martha was more than ready to convince him. She dug into the front pocket of the pack she had set at her side and grabbed a small piece of folded paper tucked within.

Standing up with a flourish, she presented the sheet to the Doctor. "I've narrowed down the list of possible perpetrators to one of these seven people."

He frowned at her, blinking repeatedly. "You keep a list of the people who have been trying to kill you in your back pack?"

"What? I like having things handy." She scowled at him. "And they haven't been trying to kill me."

He rolled his eyes and ignored the second half of her statement, flicking his gaze to the paper. "Bit odd."

"Says the man who made a timey-wimy device in four hours."

"I have my hobbies!"

She grinned. "Just look at the names."

He obediently did so, shrugging once done looking over the meager list. "I've never heard of any of these people." He gave her back the paper. "And how did you narrow the group down from 'all of humanity' to these seven anyway?" He smirked. "Gather all of the suspicious looking people in the general vicinity and picked out the ones who looked the most threatening?" He frowned, glancing up briefly, recalling something. "I've done that before, actually. Usually works."

Martha rolled her eyes and thrust the list, complete with places of work and residence, back into his hand, pointing to the various names. "These are people who have moved to London in the past year and a half, had bought stores of the medication that Florence was overdosed with, and who have also bought Bloodroot."

"Bloodroot?"

"What I was poisoned with. You can't get it in small doses since it's so hard to find, you have to get it special from people in the forestry, and they only sell in bulk. So-"

"All of these things leave a big paper trail."

"Exactly." A big paper trail that was incredibly easy to follow after working with Toshiko Sato for a year.

The Doctor examined the list with more interest now, bringing his eyes back to Martha. "Why only people who've moved to London in the past year and a half?"

"Because they didn't start sooner." She smiled, recognizing the grudging look of acknowledgment that was growing on his face. "Give them up to six months to set up shop, but other than that there shouldn't have been a reason to wait." She allowed herself a slightly bitter smirk. "It's not as if you're prone to popping around of your own volition."

He guiltily brought his stare back to the list, letting out a breath of air. "So seven people."

Martha beamed in satisfaction, knowing she had won him over. "Seven," she said, nodding agreeably.

He flicked his gaze back to her. "And you're sure about this?"

"You're going to doubt me now?" She raised a bemused eyebrow. "Again? After what happened last time?"

The Doctor coughed awkwardly, no doubt remembering the gunfight that had led them to the small apartment in the first place. "Right, Seven people then." With a firm nod he folded up the list and stuck it inside of his jacket pocket. "Well, Martha Jones."

He extended his hand, palm up, locking his eyes with hers in a warm invitation.

Smiling, she entwined her fingers in his.

It was nice, having a hand to hold again.

The Doctor returned her grin. "It looks like we have some work to do."


	7. Chapter 7

**Title**: Wasteland (7/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 4,029  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords."  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: A huge thanks to **persiflage**(underscore)**1** (on LJ) for looking over this beast and from saving us all from mistakes o' death! (That's right. Death. These are intense mistakes, let me tell you.) And I apologize, but this site has officially made all of my formating wonky. The breaks, as such, could be a bit confusing (they don't always change POV), so sorry for the inconvenience! Any concrit or feedback is most appreciated and thanks for your time!

* * *

The Doctor had always been a fan of tastefully trimmed greenery. Unfortunately, he was rarely offered opportunities to observe them properly and thus nurse this long-abused hobby. Thanks to the glow of the street lamps lining the street and intruding on the dark night, however, he could clearly see every carefully clipped leaf. Which, really, made this spying session quite special for the Doctor in terms of his gardening endeavors.

"Martha, look!" he said quietly as he pointed at a bush slightly to the left of the one they were currently hiding behind. "It's a swan. A lovely one, if I do say so, too. I think it's a Cygnus, if I'm not mistaken."

"Doctor!" His partner in crime whispered fiercely in his ear, smacking him on the shoulder.

Why was it that, when cross, humans always seemed to channel their mothers at their most terrifying?

"What? It's a nicely executed swan!"

"We're not here to look at the shrubbery, Doctor."

"That doesn't mean we can't admire impressive gardening when we see it, does it?"

Martha laughed and then instantly slapped a hand over her mouth, an action quickly accompanied by another punch to his shoulder as she continued to muffle her snickers with her fingers.

And, even if it meant that he had an unpleasant stinging sensation on his arm because of it, the Doctor was thrilled to hear her laughing again. Not a bitter or resigned sort of laughter, but the kind of mirth that had drawn him to Martha in the first place, the sort that made her appreciate unplanned trips to the moon and space ships made out of wood. He had been worried, for a while there, that she had lost that humor, that unquenchable spirit that made her so spectacular, that had kept her standing while the entire world was falling to its knees around her.

He had never cherished that resolve in Martha the way he should have, not really. Not until he thought that it might have been lost forever.

The Doctor had a way of not realizing how precious the most steadfast aspects of his existence were until it was too late. Planets with archaic traditions and medical students with enough wonder to find hope in the most desolate of situations. He had underestimated them both, back when he hadn't known any better.

It wasn't to say that he didn't think Martha had changed, because she had. Not much, mind. She was still brilliant. Clever and resourceful, independent, funny, stubborn, ready to fight and defend what she believed in. But she was harder too, less trusting, less innocent. And there was a new sadness about her, something dark that lingered just around the edges of her smile.

It was terrifying, this sadness, because what worried him the most about it was the thought that this hint of despair hovering around Martha had always been there and he simply hadn't noticed.

But things were different now. He wasn't going to ignore Martha, wasn't going to take her for granted. No, he was going to value even the most mundane feature the universe had to offer him. He wasn't going to miss or disregard a thing, either the spectacular qualities of Martha Jones or the smallest most remote detail he would come across.

And that included the crafty and talented snipping of bushes. No matter what snide thing Miss Jones had to say about them.

"They're beautiful examples of gardening executed at its finest," he insisted, looking at Martha accusingly.

She rolled her eyes and let out a dramatic sigh. "Fine," she muttered at last. "They're lovely. Now that I've shown my appreciation properly, can we get back to our purpose for being here?"

The Doctor gave a smug grin and then focused his attentions back on the subject of their sneakiness. From the dim glow of the lights illuminating the entrance to the auction center, the Doctor confirmed that their stalkee was an older gentleman with balding hair and a rigid set about his shoulders, a stern image completed by a severe mustache and cane.

"Simon Frankford, a diamond trader," Martha explained from just behind him, her breath hitting the nape of his neck and causing shivers to make their way up his spine. It was not, the Doctor decided, an entirely unpleasant sensation.

And he wasn't quite certain what to make of that.

"Said he bought the store of bloodroot to humanely kill the rats infesting his diamond cutting offices," Martha continued.

It didn't surprise him that she had memorized the information.

The Time Lord nodded, shaking himself (while ignoring certain shivers) and eyeing the man more closely. He was pacing back and forth in front of the building, cane hooked over his arm as he lit a cigarette. "Now we just have to see if he does anything suspicious."

He could all but hear Martha's raised eyebrow from behind him. "Anything suspicious? What does that entail, exactly?"

"Oh, you know." He shrugged. "Worshiping alien gods. Odd fascination with teaspoons. Ritual sacrifices. Maybe he walks funny."

"Alien gods? Sacrifices? Walking funny?" He felt hands tugging at the shoulders of his jacket and found himself turned around, facing Martha's stern stare. "You still think an alien's doing this, don't you?"

"No!" He denied quickly.

She frowned.

"Well, possibly."

The frown morphed into a glare.

"I'm just not ruling them out."

And the glare had become a full-blown scowl.

For some reason, his companions had the tendency to make that face at him quite a bit. Odd, considering how charming and brilliant he was.

"I thought that we agreed-"

"Yes, yes," the Doctor waved a hand dismissively. "Humans. Most likely humans." He turned back to stare at the man once more. "But if it's not, we should be looking out for those sacrifices."

Martha sighed in exasperation behind him. "I've had a lot of time to think about this, you know."

"Too much time," he said, glancing over his shoulder at her once more, uncertain.

He knew that he was treading on thin ice with Martha. Although there was a renewed (and much welcomed) sense of friendliness between the doctor and the Time Lord, it was equally apparent that things still weren't as they had been, and there wasn't any wonder why.

Every companion the Doctor had traveled with had their breaking point, and due to circumstance and carelessness on his part, Martha had been pushed far beyond her boundaries. So there was a careful hesitancy that she had with him now, a restraint that made him cautious, uneasy. Unwilling to test those boundaries further by antagonizing her.

But nor was he willing to come to the wrong conclusion out of a need for politeness. The Doctor wouldn't be pleased with a less-than-perfect explanation, and he knew that Martha had an equal passion for accuracy, for justice. She just needed a little reminding of it, a little help uncovering that zeal for truth that had been buried under justified bitterness and anger.

Besides, rudeness was a very persistent trait. If there was ever any opportunity to antagonize anyone he really couldn't be stopped, in spite of his best judgment.

"There comes a point when you're so focused on a problem that you lose the details."

Martha opened her mouth to protest.

He swiftly interrupted. "You said that your patient was overdosed with medication over a period of eight months?"

She nodded, clearly impatient. "Yes."

"How would a human administer it without getting caught?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "You said it wasn't anyone on your staff, so it must have been a stranger. Once, twice. All right. People can be overlooked. But for over half a year?"

Martha's brow furrowed, and for the first time she tore her fierce gaze away from him, staring at the ground.

"And how would a human get into your house to poison your food without your noticing?" He knew that after training with Jack, getting past Martha's defenses would be no small feat. "Why didn't anyone help you when you were mugged?" Robbed twice on busy twenty-first century London streets without anyone stepping in to assist, especially when a woman has her hand broken during the attack, was more than a little odd. "Why dose everyone think that Leo's friend at work died due to an accident?" At a busy construction site where accidents were common, everyone would be on the lookout.

The Doctor eyed Martha intently. "A human couldn't manage all of that without drawing some attention to himself."

Martha brought her stare back to him, arms crossed over her chest as she took in a large breath of air.

He looked at her kindly. "You know I'm right, Martha."

"No, I don't," she corrected quickly as she let out an exasperated sigh. "But that doesn't mean that I don't think you have a point." There was the slightest incline of her head, an almost acknowledgement that seemed to make her deflate, Martha losing her rigid stance and determined glower, fixing her gaze back on him. "If you're so certain that it's not a human, then why are we here?"

"Just because it's not a human doesn't mean it doesn't look like one." He smiled reassuringly at her. "Your case still stands, Martha." He patted his jacket pocket, where the list resided. "It's one of these people."

"Right," Martha said, shifting on her feet. She was clearly less than satisfied with the Doctor's conclusions, but ready to compromise.

All things considered, the Doctor was willing to content himself with that.

He gave a firm nod and started to turn back to Mr. Frankford, only to be stopped short.

"You underestimate us, you know."

He faced her again and raised an eyebrow. "Underestimate you? Humans?" He shook his head solemnly. "Never." He went back to observing Frankford, crouching back behind the bushes as he continued to talk to Martha quietly. "I've traveled with a lot of people, you know. Not always humans, mind, but a fair amount." He felt Martha inch closer behind him. "Time and time again this species surprises me, not something that most life forms can boast about." He looked over his shoulder only to find Martha's face incredibly close to his own, her brown eyes focused intently on his. "No," he said, surprised by how quiet his voice had become as he maintained Martha's gaze. "I don't underestimate humans. If anything I overestimate you, thinking too well of you to imagine that one of your kind is capable of all this."

A part of him wondered, staring up at the woman who had walked the earth and saved them all, whether it was humanity he overestimated, or her.

Martha's eyes gentled slightly, and she gave him a small smile. "That's dangerous, Doctor."

"I know." And he did. Caring too much for any one thing, to the point of overlooking its faults, was one of the Doctor's deadliest flaws. The world had bled for that mistake not so long ago. "But I'm terribly fond of you lot, you know."

And then Martha's grin widened, and the Doctor considered, for an instant, just how universal that comment was.

He quickly pulled away, coughing as he looked to the diamond trader as he entered the building across the street. "Did you see that odd shuffle?"

Martha similarly focused herself. "Definitely a shuffle." She shared a glance with the Doctor, eyebrow raised. "But a suspicious shuffle?"

"Is there any other kind of shuffle?"

She shrugged. "True."

"Well come on then!" With that the Doctor pushed through the bushes, making his way for the entrance of the building.

"But what are we doing?" Martha called helplessly after him, walking around, rather than through, said shrubbery with a bit more dignity.

"Making things up as we go!"

"Sounds familiar." He could hear the resigned smirk in her voice as she followed.

* * *

Martha eyed Susana Fillmore, a prominent member of the fur trade (who had bought the Bloodroot to kill the creature currently draped around her neck), with thinly veiled bafflement. "She looks like she's eaten someone."

"Martha Jones!" The Doctor sent her a wide-eyed look. "Aren't you the rude one?"

It was a rare thing indeed when anyone could scandalize the Doctor, and Martha found herself pleasantly gratified to know that she was capable of it.

"Pot calling the kettle black, I'd say," she muttered in return, straining on tiptoes to see the voluptuous woman's progress as she made her way through the London streets. "And I meant the way she was _walking_, thank you very much." She gestured toward the mountainous trader feebly. "Look at the way she's hobbling."

The Doctor squinted as he leaned calmly against a lamppost, easily seeing over the heads of the London crowd from his greater height.

She fought the compulsion to glare at the Time Lord for this genetic affront, mostly due to the fact that glaring _up_ at him wouldn't exactly add any gravity to her cause.

"Waddling, more like," the Doctor remarked after a few moments of close study.

"She's eaten too much," Martha stated proudly.

He blinked. "So?"

"Isn't that suspicious?" she demanded. She shifted her feet before letting out a sigh. "Couldn't she have eaten someone?" she asked grudgingly.

The Doctor sent her an expression of elated surprise.

It wasn't that Martha believed him, mind. She still didn't think that extraterrestrials were responsible for havoc that had been wrought in the Doctor's absence. It was all too quiet, too subtle and too slow for the alien plots she had seen come to fruition in the past. What's more, everything that had been done, from the muggings to the murders, had been far too _human_ in nature to have been orchestrated by any alien being.

But, just because she didn't agree with the Time Lord's theories did not mean that she couldn't, that she shouldn't, entertain them.

And so she returned his look of shock with an air of expectancy.

The Doctor grinned down at her before calmly glancing back over the crowd. "Don't flatter yourself, she probably just had too many crab cakes."

She resisted the urge to throw up her hands in frustration. When she decided to humor his theories she was instantly dismissed.

Well that was just typical, wasn't it?

"Well what's so ridiculous about my idea?"

He gave a casual shrug. "You humans don't taste all that great."

Martha's frustration quickly dissipated in an overwhelming wave of horror. "You've eaten a human before?"

The Doctor, no doubt hearing the tone of revulsion in her voice, turned to look at her again. It took him a few moments to register the expression on her paralyzed face as one of fear. "No!" he reassured her quickly.

Martha stared at him pointedly. One did not just _know_ how other species tasted, Time Lord or not.

"I haven't!" he insisted. "I've heard things though."

"Things? What sort of things?"

The Doctor stole a quick glance at her, saw her face, and then pushed off from the lamppost, striding through the sea of people to catch up with Fillmore.

Martha grinned, all but chasing him down the street. "What've you heard about the exotic treat of human, Doctor? What's the matter with the fine dish?"

He mimicked her smile as they continued observing Susana Fillmore. "Stringy," he said giving a definitive nod. "Stringy and not very filling."

Martha wasn't entirely certain whether she should be insulted or not.

* * *

Eight hours later, all of these hours being spent fruitlessly following Ms. Fillmore about London, Martha was lounging on the floor of her old room of her former flat. In front of her she had her laptop (finally out of the bag she had been lugging around since the shoot-out), and was looking up the whereabouts of their next, hopefully more interesting, target.

Except, of course, there was no real guarantee that Ms. Fillmore wasn't the person they were after. Limited to doing nothing more than following their suspects about, it was highly unlikely that Martha and the Doctor would just happen upon these people in the middle of doing something 'suspicious.' But until they found more evidence, there was no way to be certain of anyone's innocence.

Because, given Martha's past experience, certainty was just too simple. Not challenging enough, even.

Or at least that was what the Doctor had said when she had brought the problem to his attention.

She fought the compulsion to bang her head against the screen of her computer.

Almost as if he had sensed her fond thoughts of him, the Doctor gave the bedroom door a knock and waited for at least a millisecond (incredibly restrained, for the Time Lord) before charging into the room, running a hand enthusiastically through his hair. "I've got it!"

Martha blearily pushed herself up from the floor and blinked at him. "Got what?"

It was just rude of him to be so alert when Martha could barely keep her eyes open.

"How we're going to find out who the culprit is!" he responded eagerly, stopping mid pace to send her a wide, full-toothed, smile.

"You'll shout so loudly that they'll instantly know where we are and come find us themselves?" she asked with a smirk, leaning against a wall and raising an indulgent eyebrow.

The Doctor laughed. "Almost."

She felt her brow furrow. "What?"

He began to pace again, thinking aloud in her general direction. "We already established that we don't know much about these people other than a few meager, if incredibly significant, accounting facts." He shot her a look. "And that even if these facts are important, they alone aren't incriminating."

Martha nodded, smiling a bit when a hand once again came to his hair, the Doctor frantically pulling at the locks. She thought it best to wait to ask him if Time Lords could go bald.

"We need more than numbers on paper, more than odd shuffles and wobbles."

"Waddles," she corrected with grin.

He waved a dismissive hand before he stopped moving, eyeing her intently. "We need proof that isn't circumstantial, that is absolutely definite. And the only thing we _do_ know for certain about this person is that they want the TARDIS, and therefore me." He took a big breath, spreading out his arms theatrically. "So let's give me to them."

Martha felt, for a jolting instant, her heart stop beating. "You want to be bait?"

He nodded keenly, grinning with his arms still splayed.

"No!" In an instant she pushed herself off of the wall, striding up to him. Who was he, to go risking himself like that, as important as he was, with all the good he could do for the universe?

How could he put himself in harm's way after all she had done to keep him safe?

The Doctor dropped his arms, staring at her seriously. "I wasn't asking permission, Martha."

She gave her head a vehement shake. "I don't care. Absolutely not, I won't allow it." Now she was standing in front of him, arms crossed over her chest, almost yelling. "You'd be in danger and we'd be giving them exactly what they want! How will that help anyone?"

"The only thing that should distinguish our villain from the rest is their knowledge of the TARDIS."

"And you," Martha snapped, throwing him a quick glare. Despite the Doctor's conceptions of what their villain wanted, she wouldn't let him downplay his own significance in this scenario.

"Or me," he consented quickly. "The point is that none of the others would have any idea who I am! If they have a special interest when I take off the TARDIS key and stroll down the street, it means that they're our guy." He frowned. "Woman." Another frown. "Person-alien thing," he finally settled with, adding in an expressive twiddling of his fingers with a small smirk, inviting her to share in the joke.

But Martha wouldn't be distracted that easily. "It's too dangerous and you're too important," she said with a sigh, feeling her spirits drop.

But in spite of the danger, she knew he was right. At this rate, they'd be observing the tinniest shuffle for years in hopes of finding something significant. The Doctor had a point, a good one. But he couldn't be handed to these people on a silver platter, couldn't be displayed like that so they could simply snatch him out from under her nose, negating the significance, the meaning, to all of the harm protecting him had caused.

But, maybe he didn't have to.

Martha's head snapped up, and she looked to the Doctor with a grin. "I'll do it."

His expression was suddenly devoid of any discernable emotion. "What?"

"It's perfect!" she said, gripping the arm of his jacket in excitement. "They would know who I am, and now that they've seen you and have the TARDIS, they would blatantly be searching for me. And I'm expendable." She smiled, giving his jacket another tug. "It's absolutely perfect!"

His hands were suddenly on her shoulders, their coolness making goose bumps form across her skin, and before she could register that she had been moved at all she was in front of him, his eyes locked on hers. "You're what?" he asked, tone as stern as his grip as he looked at her.

But it wasn't the Doctor's typical, disapproving glance, the one that could make gods and demons quake in its intensity, that could shame the most proud and that had the power to usher in the destruction of a world. This stare was different, a look that she had never before received from him, his eyes boring in to hers with a heartbreaking sadness that almost made her stagger with the power of it.

She wasn't sure what to discern from that sorrow, but she knew that she had to make it better. Do anything to get some of that life back into those eyes, rediscover that enthusiastic spark that had been there mere minutes ago.

And so she tried to explain. "I'm not valuable in the way that you are, Doctor." She smiled gently, treading softly, trying to make it better, easier. "I can't control space and time. I can barely operate my mobile," she said with a laugh. "If they catch me the universe won't be at risk."

A flash of something unidentifiable flashed over his features before he slowly released his hold on her shoulders. "I'm not letting you do this."

She stared at him intently. "I'm not asking permission, Doctor."

There was a tense silence for a moment, neither willing to budge, each gazing at the other with a barely contained _something_. A sense of unknown urgency was layered just beneath the surface of this encounter, and Martha got the feeling that they were talking about far more than a game of cat and mouse, that this wasn't just a battle of wills, that it was something more.

But in the next instant, the Doctor had broken their gaze and he was throwing his arms up into the air and rolling his eyes. "Fine," he said with a longsuffering sigh, all good humor once more. "We'll both do it. You happy?"

Martha shook herself, trying to adjust to the abrupt shift in mood, attempting to regain her footing. Life with the Doctor, it had always been a bit of a dance.

"No," she said firmly once she had reestablished herself, grinning to fit the new demeanor. "We'll take turns. That way if one of us gets captured the other can bail them out." She held out her hand. "Deal?"

Another sigh escaped his lips as he glanced at the offered hand. "Deal." He shook the offered limb, quickly letting go and bobbing on his heels expectantly. "Who's next on the list?"

Glad to have reached a compromise, one in which she was certain she would be able to watch him, Martha felt a tide of relief wash through her. "Gerald Gisbond," she replied. "CEO of a soap company."

He smiled. "You still good at running, Miss Jones?"

"You know me," she remarked with good humor. "I love running."


	8. Chapter 8

**Title**: Wasteland (8/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha  
**Word Count**: 4,493  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. –sniff-  
**Spoilers**: Up to "The Last of the Time Lords."  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: It's been a while, I know, I know. But there's an update now! Eh, eh? -is convincing- A huge thanks to persiflage1 for her beta help. Concrit is always welcomed, and thank you all for your time and patience.

Under normal circumstances, the Doctor might have found the disturbing lack of progress he was experiencing discouraging. After all, it was the morning after their (frankly magnificent) plan to share the coveted role of bait, and yet Martha and the Doctor had yet to get any interesting dirt on their stalkees. It wasn't that he required instant success with his endeavors, but the Doctor simply wasn't used to having to wait around for things to fall into place. Not only was he typically too brilliant for such meandering to be necessary, but he also found that standing still for too long made him dwell on the sorts of things he spent a great deal of his energy trying to avoid.

But, currently, the Doctor wasn't disheartened. Eating something more substantial than a granola bar for the first time in four days did amazing things to restore one's optimism.

Martha didn't seem to share his good cheer. "Do we really have to eat this?" she asked, poking at her unwrapped burger with thinly masked distain.

"I'm hungry and there's no food in the apartment."

Her skeptical gaze remained fixed on the meat in front of her. "Don't you know how bad this is for you?"

"Actually, yes. But I also know that it's delicious." He made a show of taking a particularly large bite and gulping it down in an enthusiastic fashion. "Yum!"

Martha winced.

"You humans do get a few things right." He took an obnoxious sip from his (as advertised) Extra Super Large cola. "Impossible to get the same quality of flavorful grease anywhere else in the universe."

Her face morphed into an all-out scowl that he couldn't help but find adorable.

A sentiment that he took care not to focus on too closely.

"This is disgusting," she muttered at last, re-wrapping her burger and pushing it to his end of the table. She almost looked as if she was afraid it would attack her without that formidable distance separating them. "Don't we have to watch Vanderbelt some more?" she asked hopefully before her shoulders drooped a bit. "Granted, we've been following him for fifteen hours and the strangest look he's given us was when you tripped over your own feet and fell."

The Doctor glared at her. "_You_ tripped me." He did his best to ignore the throb of pain that came somewhere from his shin.

Martha smiled smugly. "And it got him to notice you, didn't it?"

"And he barely batted an eye-lash for all of your noble efforts," he concluded with equal smugness. "So, it's time to eat!"

There were a few moments of blissful silence in which he consumed his multi-meated monstrosity with great enthusiasm.

"All of your arteries are being clogged right now, you know," Martha remarked, throwing him a bored glance. "And you must have twice as many of them as I do."

"At least if I get a heart attack I'll have a spare."

"At the rate you're going, I don't think that'll help for long." She winced as he gulped down another bite. "Eating like this is going to get you killed. Forget the various threatening menaces throughout the galaxies, this will be your end."

It was always a nuisance, traveling with medical types. Such silly notions of health they were always pushing on him. Never mind that they typically had the audacity to be right about them. Determined not to give in, the Doctor took another sip of cola.

"The Doctor, having traveled to the far reaches of the universe, having confronted every sort of danger and survived them all, will finally be conquered by fast food."

He glared, slowing his eating. "Stop that."

Martha shrugged. "I'm just warning you. Want you to be prepared for your final doom."

She picked up her formerly discarded burger and thrust it toward him. "Doctor, meet your downfall!"

The meat paddy flopped repulsively within the confines of its bun.

"Doesn't seem quite as dignified as death by saving the universe, does it?"

And looking at her then, a flopping burger in hand and the most ridiculous of expressions on her face, the Doctor marveled once again at how amazing Martha Jones was. How she, even now in this small way, was still trying to save him from himself.

With a sigh he put down the remainder of his burger and pushed it away, trying to fight down nausea. He sent Martha a scowl. "You've ruined my meal."

"Have I? Sorry about that."

Basing his assessment on the grin on her face, the Doctor didn't think she looked sorry at all.

"Now!" she said cheerfully, clapping her hands and standing up from their table. "We were hunting down a villain of some sort before this, weren't we?"

Hiding his smile, the Doctor got to his feet.

Martha rounded the corner, pulling small bits of tree out of her hair as she stalked up to the Doctor, snagging her camouflaging TARDIS key out of his proffered hand.

"How big of a spectacle did I make of myself?" she asked, tugging the key over her head and resolutely continuing to pull shrubbery off her person.

"It wasn't that big," he reassured her, pointedly not looking at her and all but whistling innocently as he eyed the various passersby.

Ceasing with her grooming, Martha grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and forced him to look at her, clearly less than amused, face. "I climbed a tree and pretended to be trying to get my invisible cat down while screaming, 'Kitty come down, Kitty,' until Charles Michaels, a highly respected lawyer throughout all of London, came out and asked me to leave the premises."

He blinked at her in what seemed to be an absolutely terrified fashion.

"How big."

"Huge," he admitted quickly, all the while still staring at her with thinly veiled fear. He didn't even attempt to pull himself free of her grasp.

It was good to know she could inspire some sort of dread within him, she supposed. Seemed to be an incredibly efficient method of getting things done, in any case.

Still bug-eyed, he pointed across the street. "That lady wanted to call the police, more specifically the loony bin, until I told her you had a condition and that I was supervising you."

She sighed, letting go of his jacket and slumping her shoulders dejectedly.

He rubbed one of said shoulders comfortingly. "But if it's any reassurance, if I was Kitty I definitely would have got out of that tree."

Martha was surprised when he didn't remove the hand immediately, the pressure adding a warm, soothing weight against her skin.

Best, she thought, not to dwell on it. She instantly shrugged off his hand in what she hoped was a casual manner. It wouldn't do, she decided, to encourage in whatever small way the infatuation with him that she couldn't seem to shake. Because, drawn to him though she may be, it was still just that — an infatuation. After Tom, after having the short time she was allowed with him, Martha understood that what she felt for the Doctor has always been a far cry from real love.

Love, she had learned, was meant to be shared.

"So it was effective insanity," she muttered, missing the confounded expression on the Doctor's face as she left his side. "Excellent." She began to make her dogged way down the street, heading for the apartment as she continued to flick off bits of greenery.

After a small hesitation that she didn't question, the Doctor followed her. "That's always my philosophy."

The Doctor contemplatively walked away from the quaint house on the corner of Elm Street, glancing up to the expectant stare of his companion on the corner.

"Well that was odd," he remarked as he approached her.

"What?" asked Martha, handing him his TARDIS key as she got on tiptoes and eyed the house with distrust. "Did she recognize you?"

He was still frowning, pulling the key over his head. "No, no, definitely not. She's not involved in any of this. Quite a sweet old woman, really. Great biscuits."

Martha gave an indulgent smile. "The point, Doctor?"

"Right." He shook himself, banishing all wondrous thoughts of biscuits. "The point. Well, when I told her that I needed a remedy for cramps she gave me the oddest look…"

Martha blinked at him. "You do know that Lillian Lard is a midwife, don't you?"

"Well yes, but I don't see why that should make any amount of dif-" He glanced at Martha's raised eyebrow, looked around at his surroundings, and realized his — tiny, really — mistake.

"Oh. Twenty-_First_ century."

Martha continued to blink. "Yes, Doctor."

"Right. Men don't exactly have a need for midwives yet, do they?"

Well it wasn't his fault he forgot these sorts of things. Traveling through all of space and time like he did, it was a wonder he remembered the correct vernacular for each century, much less have a little thing like the details of pregnancy memorized.

Honestly, you could only expect so much out of a Time Lord.

With that thought he strode down the street, determined to do his best to wipe the memory of the horrified look on Ms. Lard's face from his mind entirely, and to convince himself that he wasn't at all responsible for it.

"Yet?" Martha asked as she caught up with him.

It seemed she had been a bit frozen back there for a minute. Oh the fuss people made about a fluke of biology.

"What do you mean 'yet'? Do men get pregnant in the future?" she asked eagerly, like a child begging for candy.

"Ask Jack."

"Jack? Pregnant!" She laughed, clapping her hands together and skipping a bit in front of him. "Oh, just wait until I tell Gwen!"

"To be fair, it was only once," he pointed out, sharing a smile with her. It was funny, how Martha's glee seemed to radiate from her and spread into him, like warmth from a sun. "Apparently he got very self-conscious about his figure."

Martha's snickers continued to warm him all the way back to the apartment.

Martha eyed the intimidating entrance to the hotel with despair. "The last one, Rodolfo Rossi, ambassador from Italy." She let out a sigh, pushing her back to the tree she had been peering from behind. With little hope, she looked helplessly at the Doctor beside her. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Wrong? The magnificent Martha Jones?" He nudged her gently with his shoulder. "None of that. We might only have one more suspect left, but his name's Rodolfo. That's a shifty name, isn't it?"

Martha scuffed the dirt with her feet. "I suppose."

The Doctor frowned. "You're discouraged." He adopted a severe expression. "You've been eating too many granola bars." He nodded knowingly. "I've been trying to tell you, you've got to have some variety in your diet if you want to keep a cheery attitude. Now if you'd only let us eat out —"

"Eating grease in a bun isn't my idea of 'eating out,'" she stated, grinning when he noticeably deflated next to her.

She didn't care what type of alien he was, or if he was as skinny as a stick. Doctor Jones _would_ make the Time Lord eat better, whether he wanted to or not. At least then she would be making progress on some front.

"And it's not the food. I just —" She looked to the ground. "I thought we would have something by now."

Martha had been agonizing over Tom's death for nearly a year, and although she hadn't wanted the Doctor to come for his own sake, his presence was a more than adequate catalyst to set wheels in motion that had been yearning for movement. Before she had always feared that, should she retaliate in any way, they would do it again. Kill someone else, leave another person's blood on her hands.

And so she had waited, quietly gathering information for months while all of those around her assumed she had been driven to paranoia by grief. She cut off all ties, hoping to eliminate possible targets, started focusing on her career even while distancing herself from her patients. Everything had been building, a tension that continued to grow the more time passed, every new incident sending her (or those she knew) to emergency only adding to her sense of urgency.

And then, the Doctor had come, and the damn had broken. Now that their target was in sight, there was no need for the petty tortures that had kept them occupied for so long, and now there was no danger to anyone who stayed away from the Time Lord. Martha could have been left alone, been free to go back to her life the second she found him on Tom's doorstep.

But it was Tom's doorstep, to Tom's house that they were going to share. Where they were going to throw dinner parties and raise their children. Where they had been hoping to build their life together, all the mundane, glorious details of their future carefully embedded in every inch of brick, fiber of carpet and paint on the walls.

The Doctor had arrived on the bitter, shattered remains of a life that Martha might have been able to have, and in doing so had evoked the monsters that had taken it from her.

And it was time that they faced the consequences for what they had done.

Except they hadn't yet - might never at the rate Martha and the Doctor were moving. And the thought of a lifetime without knowing, without facing, those who had taken Tom away from her was not a life Martha could see herself surviving.

Yes, Martha was discouraged, but she felt had every reason, and every right, to be.

She rubbed the back of her neck, trying to get out the kinks. "You've been here more than a week, the TARDIS is gone, here's our last guy, and still we've found nothing." She continued to stare at the dirt at her feet, feeling utterly defeated.

Then she felt a finger under her chin, and a pair of warm brown eyes locked themselves steadily on hers. "Never discount the last option, Martha. More often than not it ends up becoming the best one, when everything's said and done."

There it was again. That welcome familiarity, the intimacy and concern she had yearned for years ago, a consideration centered on the gentle pressure of his fingertips.

And once again she forced herself to push it away.

She twisted her way out of his careful grasp, glancing around the tree once more. "Yeah, well, the universe probably wants to give you some practice time before the actual crisis begins." She threw him a grin over her shoulder.

The Doctor huffed. "I'm perfectly capable of handling any crisis at a moment's notice, thank you very much Doctor Jones."

"Of course you are," Martha agreed, still teasing.

More huffing ensued.

She smiled, straightening herself and taking a big breath. "Okay. Let's get the bad guy."

The Doctor returned her grin. "So he's going to be coming out from that hotel?"

"Yep, in just a few minutes." They had been able to access his itinerary online, through various insecure and highly illegal networks. "Thank you, Tosh."

"And what are you going to do to get his attention?" the Doctor asked, peering with her around the tree.

"Walk in front of his car and ask him the time."

"Less dramatic than tree climbing."

"Yes, well, it's been a long week."

Across the street, a tall, wire-thin man stepped out of the hotel's entrance, flanked by three laughably large and muscular men (one with blond hair, one with brown and the last with black — a matching set!), obviously body guards. He had dark, slicked back hair and was dressed in clearly expensive clothes that looked out of place in the drab surroundings. Over his wrist he had flicked the handle of a cane and was purposefully striding toward a black, impressive car waiting at the end of a small walkway.

Martha grinned. "Show time." She slipped the twine holding her key over her head and handed it to the man at her shoulder.

The Doctor took her key and eyed the scene warily. "Be careful."

"Always."

With that Martha jogged across the street, being certain to keep out of the direct line of sight of Rodolfo and his impressive entourage. Reaching the end of the block, Martha began to walk at a brisk pace towards the hotel as the man neared his car. It wouldn't do to have gone to all this trouble only to miss the limited opportunity.

A few moments later and Martha was perfectly positioned, having cut in front of the bodyguards just as Rodolfo's hand had reached the vehicle.

"Excuse me, sir?"

The ambassador turned, a haughty eyebrow raised at the interruption.

"Do you happen to have the -"

She didn't bother to finish the sentence, as the man's eyes had widened into a look of shocked recognition. "Martha Jones."

The sound of three guns being cocked seemed to echo from behind her.

Rodolfo smiled. "We've been looking for you and your friend for quite some time."

She heard rather than saw a body at her back taking a step closer, felt the ripple in the air as his hand began the descent to her shoulder.

And so she did the one logical thing anybody would have done in similar circumstances.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

_Always scream,_ Jack had said, their first day of training. _You might not look as tough, but no human can take a sound like that without some sort of effect, and an effect might be all you need._

And it was.

She elbowed the man behind her (the blond one) while he was busy grasping at his ears, and she used his staggering momentum to shove him into the hulking mass lumbering behind him. Then she turned to Rodolfo, still gaping after her scream, jumped slightly (he was very tall) and pushed his head violently into the hood of his car.

Then she ran.

The Doctor was already half away across the street, and made a sort of yelping noise when she yanked his hand and turned him jerkingly around.

"Run!" she yelled.

He had no troubles complying, especially when they heard a cursing voice mutter, "Get them! And remember, you can hurt them but we don't want them dead!"

Apparently Rodolfo wasn't pleased about his head becoming intimately familiar with his shiny car.

In a matter of seconds three sets of feet were pounding on the road right behind them.

"Now what, oh mighty Time Lord who can handle any crisis at a moment's notice?" Martha asked the Doctor, panting only slightly from the running.

He had taken the lead, having the longer legs, and was now almost pulling her along after him as they dashed in and out through various side streets, trying to lose their pursuers. "I was hoping you'd know, Miss Savior of the Earth."

"They have guns," she pointed out.

"Of course they do."

"And I left mine at home."

"Good."

"Not good. We've got no way of fighting back!"

"I think the running's working out well, don't you?" he asked cheerily as they turned another corner.

Only to be met with towering, half-made buildings, a terrifyingly tall fence with spikes, and no way out.

A dead end.

"Nope," Martha said. "Don't think it's working out well at all."

"Gotcha."

Martha spun around, her hand still clasped in the Doctor's, and took in the sight of the three panting henchmen, all of their guns trained on either her or the Doctor.

"A year's worth of work, for this guy?" the black haired one asked, looking the Doctor up and down with a scowl.

"Doesn't look like much, does he?" remarked the brown one.

"Franklin, Danish, shut up!" the blond snapped, never taking his eyes away from the two figures front of him. "Now," he said, addressing the Doctor and Martha. "We can do this two ways. One way involves us using these guns here," he gestured to his own weapon, the lesser minions mimicking the action. "But that all gets a wee bit messy, and I don't like cleaning up messes."

The Doctor shot Martha a quick, nervous, look.

Oh, Doctor. Still worried about her when he should be more concerned for himself. She had thought he might have learned better, by now, how much she'd changed.

After all, this wasn't the first time she'd faced down a bullet.

"But the other way's much nicer," the man continued. "We'll just knock you out, put you in bags, and let Mr. Rossi take you where he needs." He grinned sickeningly. "So, what's it going to be?"

"Between those two compelling options?" The Doctor unclenched his hand from around Martha's. "Neither, thanks."

In an instant he had his sonic screwdriver in-hand, brandishing it like a weapon at the three men as he stepped in front of Martha.

"This, gentleman, is a device that could reduce all of your brains to mush with just a press of my thumb." He smiled in that foreign way he had — cold and hard, lacking all warmth and kindness. A cruel smile.

And even knowing that he was lying, that smile still sent chills through her.

"If I were you, I'd think it best to back away." The Doctor's grin remained firmly in pace, staring down each of the men in turn.

The black haired man, Franklin, took an uncertain step back. "Do you know what that is?" he asked his buddies.

"Don't know," replied Danish, the one with brown hair, the arm that held his gun becoming unsteady. "But he's an alien. It could be anything."

A smirk formed on the last of the group's features. "It's not."

"Anders?" Franklin asked, uncertainly.

Almost as if in slow motion, Martha saw Anders' hand tighten on the trigger, saw the bullet burst out of the chamber, and saw the Doctor crumple to his knees.

"No!"

Before she fully knew what she was doing she was on the ground, hands fluttering over him, trying to find the point of entry, trying to find the source of all that blood.

"Sonic," Anders muttered somewhere behind her. "A toy." She heard the smirk in his voice. "It was good advice, when he told you to switch to laser."

The blood was everywhere — she couldn't take her eyes off it. On his coat, his shirt, on the screwdriver.

And on her hands. Always, forever, on her hands.

"Doctor! Doctor!"

She had started crying.

She shouldn't have. She should have been checking for vital signs, should have been doing everything she could to slow the bleeding, to make it stop, to force him to live.

But instead she was crying, screaming his name and pulling on his jacket sleeve as if she hadn't been trained exactly how to handle the situation.

Because all she could think about was the last time she had been in a dead end, with the blood of the man she loved on her hands.

"Martha," a voice, coming from the mouth her hand was currently fluttering over. "Martha, I'm fine."

She took a breath.

"Well, not fine. Shot, actually." He hissed through his teeth. "But just the arm." She felt fingers, as slippery as her own, tighten over the hand that was clenching his jacket. The right (broken) hand that had seemingly found the bullet wound in spite of her hysteria, that had remembered her training and put pressure on the point of entry even when her mind had not had such prudence. "I'll be okay, Martha."

"Now," a voice said pleasantly behind her. "Let's try this again." Anders re-cocked his gun, aimed now at Martha. "Which way would we like to handle this situation?"

If she hadn't been bent over the Doctor, attached to his arm and completely unwilling to leave his side, she could have come up with something. Some special combination of actions that would have got her and the Doctor out of the unfortunate set of circumstances.

But as it was, she wasn't about to leave the Time Lord, not when the disturbing sense of déjà vu lingered so horribly over it all.

She wasn't going to let anyone else she cared for die.

So instead, she merely sat, staring helplessly at the three men and clutching at the Doctor determinedly.

"No thoughts?" Anders asked, grinning all the wider.

"Well."

The group shared a collective frown before they all turned their heads skyward, wondering where the voice had originated.

Up in the distance a red haired woman was standing on an unfinished building platform, yelling down to the group. "I do remember something being said a while back about none of these options being quite up to snuff with the man's standards."

Anders frowned, squinting up into the sun, hand trying to shield his eyes. "Who are you?"

"Just a secretary, don't mind me."

The Doctor's head shot up, and the rest of him would have done it too if Martha hadn't been holding him down. "Donna?"

"A secretary, eh?" Anders remarked. He turned to his men. "Shoot her."

"Don't!" the Doctor yelled from the ground, still trying to stand.

The men ignored him as they aimed their guns.

Donna sighed dramatically from her elevated distance. "See, and I was going to feel bad about this."

Danish glared up at her. "About what?"

"This."

Suddenly Donna disappeared behind the platform.

"I don't have time for this," Anders muttered, firing a few shots up into the air.

There was silence for a moment, replaced slowly by the sound of clanking metal.

The three men exchanged a worried look.

Seconds later they were frozen in horror as twenty huge and clearly heavy metal scaffolding poles toppled over the edge of the unfinished building.

Martha moved as soon as she saw the glint off the metal, throwing her top half over the Doctor to shield his face.

There were sounds of clanging and some muffled yells, and when Martha looked up from her kneeling position, she found a dusty pile of pipes thirty feet away from her where three terrifying men with guns had been seconds before.

Underneath her, the Doctor laughed.

"Hey, Martian!"

Martha and the Doctor shot their gazes upward to see the woman, Donna, throwing a death glare at the Time Lord.

"For being as good with time as you so often claim to be, you seem to be having some fundamental problems with your calculations. After I figure out how to get down this monstrosity and I beat you to a bloody pulp using one of those poles, we're going to discuss the basic differences between one week and nine months, you ruddy alien!"

Martha almost swore she heard the Doctor gulp.


	9. Chapter 9

**Title**: Wasteland (9/?)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha, Donna  
**Word Count**: 6,979  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. -sniff-  
**Spoilers**: Up to "Planet of the Ood." (Sort of. See AN!)  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: First: Long chapter. Hope you guys don't mind! Second: When I started this story (waaay back when) the fourth series hadn't aired yet. I've tweaked a few things, and although I'd still consider this entire fic an AU after "Last of the Time Lords," a twisted sort of canon could be applied up until "Planet of the Ood." Just let Wasteland be the introduction of Martha instead of "The Sontaran Stratagem!" It makes perfect sense, I swear. shifty eyes Mountains of thanks to **persiflage1** for her beta help. Concrit is always welcomed, and thank you all for your time and patience.

Donna Noble was not one to take injustices quietly.

No. Whenever she was dealt a personal affront the best method, she had learned, of getting this affront amended was to approach it head-on in a uniquely vocal manner she had perfected throughout the years.

Unfortunately, when the one who was unjust decided to canter off in his spaceship without leaving any means of contact so she could scream at him, Donna was forced to do just that. Suffer quietly.

And she had never been fond of that.

So, after two months being uselessly aggravated with no one to yell at for her woes but innocent bystanders, she decided to use her aggravation to accomplish more productive goals. She had moved out of her mother's house because, really, there was only so much a person could be expected to take from her mother.

Of course, in order to do that she got a job and she figured if she was going to have any sort of job at all, it might as well be something helping the meek and defenseless just so that blabbering twit of an alien couldn't act even the least bit smug when he came crawling back to her begging for forgiveness. (Which she just might be generous enough to give – after a great deal of begging.)

And, since she was doing a bit of that anyway – and there was no point going about something unless you were going to go about it properly – she began actively seeking out those meek and defenseless types in her free time.

That would show that useless twig of a man when he came crawling back to her.

Do-gooding, she had discovered, was a bit like a really bad show on the telly. She watched it once, thought it was fine enough, if a bit ridiculous, and now she couldn't seem to help herself. Every time do-gooding popped up on the telly of Donna Noble's life, she had little choice but to go forth and, well. Do good.

Which was why Donna had followed (from above – no sense of getting caught in the fray and being useless like _someone_ would have been) the rag-tag group of five that had enthusiastically made their way into the alley, gunshots and all.

Which was how she found the skinny menace having the audacity to get shot at while she watched.

Honestly. The man could barely keep himself alive without her there to remind him how stupid he was.

Which seemed to be the current role of the woman standing next to the Doctor, glaring at him and muttering even while they turned to face their pursuers.

Clearly, they were going to need assistance.

So she had made a decent attempt at reasoning with the lout, but then got on with crushing him like the little bug he was with the heavy pieces of metal at her disposal. Someday people would learn not to threaten and shoot at her, but until they did she would just have to continue making them regret it.

And finally, after giving the Doctor a good shout (far less than he deserved) she made her way down to the pavement bellow and greeted the pair that would have been bullet-ridden heaps without her.

"That was great, wasn't it?" Donna asked with a grin, addressing the young woman still hovering over the alien. "Pile of rubble, right on their heads. Waving those guns around, willy-nilly, and all it took was a few bricks to get rid of them!"

The woman returned her smile. "It was brilliant."

"Yeah, just great, Donna," the Doctor chimed in.

"I wasn't talking to _you_," she snapped.

The Doctor meekly lowered his head.

Excellent. If she could encourage this sort of meekness for a bit, maybe she would get a nice resort on one of their trips instead of a mud-filled planet full of refugees. After all, for all of his mythic rage and alien do-dads, at the end of the day the Doctor was just like any other bloke.

Utterly defenseless in the face of a woman's righteous rage.

She turned her attentions back to the young woman. "Hello there, I'm Donna Noble."

Clearly holding back amusement, she responded with a cheery, "Martha Jones."

Well this just got more and more interesting, didn't it?

"_The_ Martha Jones? I've heard of you from that one." She gestured vaguely toward the Doctor.

Martha's eyes widened in surprise. "You have?"

"Walked the Earth, right?"

"That's me." Her expression morphed slightly, seemed tired. "Walked the Earth."

Clearly, there was more to that particular story than the Doctor had ever bothered to tell Donna.

She would have to poke him a bit to get the truth out later.

But until them, continuing to give him a hard time would do. "And you did it for that useless skinny thing?"

"I am not useless or a thing, thank you!" the Time Lord said indignantly from his spot on the pavement.

Donna scowled. "Quiet you!" She smiled sweetly. "I'm talking to _Martha_."

The Doctor huffed.

If Martha had been amused before, she was all but giddy now. "Well, to be fair, it did seem like a good idea at the time. There was all of humanity to consider, after all."

"Right. Couldn't let them just go and die, could you, even if it did mean being rid of this one."

"Exactly."

"Yeah, well. What are you going to do?"

"Excuse me!" the Doctor piped in at last.

Amazing that he had been quiet for so long, really.

Donna turned a bored glance to him. "What?"

"Could I get some help here?"

"Well I don't know. When would you like that help? In a week, maybe? Or would you prefer it if I left you and never came back?" She gave his nearest elbow a kick that, while jarring, certainly wouldn't bruise.

Maybe.

And while she had been expecting an annoyed whimper of some sort, she hadn't anticipated the agonized groan that escaped the Doctor.

"Doctor?" Donna went down on a knee on the other side of the alien, exchanging a worried look with Martha over his head. "What's wrong?"

"He's been shot."

She turned back to the Doctor, glaring. "You've _what_?" She wanted to hit him again, but thought it might be best to save such physical abuses for a time when they wouldn't severely injure him.

That still didn't mean that she didn't want to.

"Donna, I'm bleeding everywhere."

She took a look at her surroundings, noticed the dark spot on the pavement, the stain on the left sleeve of his coat, the blood leaking from the wound and onto Martha's hands pressed up against it, and felt decidedly ridiculous.

"Yes, well. I was too busy screaming at you to notice it properly, wasn't I?"

Martha nodded in sympathy. "Happens all the time."

Donna made a quick mental assessment of the situation. The Doctor was talking and conscious, the bullet looked as if it had entered his upper left arm, Martha seemed to have the whole bloody gaping wound problem under control, and no one seemed to be panicking in any way.

She let out a small, internal, sigh of relief. It wouldn't have done at all, to have waited all this time for the Doctor only to have him die on her the instant she found him. In spite of it all, she really was a bit too fond of the Time Lord for her own good.

Hence, why she had decided to chase after gun-wielding madmen in the first place.

The Doctor really was a terrible influence.

"Scream at me all you want, just please don't hit me again." He sent a frightened look to Donna and then to Martha. "_Either_ of you. At least not until I've had a few hours to fix myself up."

"As if I'd hit you anyway." Martha scoffed. "I'm a doctor – the whole 'do no harm' thing is a big deal."

A doctor? Donna grinned. "Lovely! He needs a proper one about to help patch him up, with all the scrapes he gets himself into."

The Doctor gave a determined pout. "This is why more than one companion is a bad idea," he muttered. "Both of you are enjoying this too much."

Donna shrugged. "Maybe a little."

She looked over to Martha, hoping to get some snarky support, only to find the woman staring at her blood covered hands over the Doctor's arm, eyes wide and horrified.

Donna glanced at the alien, clearly completely oblivious to his friend's less than stable status as he eyed his wound with interest.

She rolled her eyes. Of course she would be the emotionally connected one when compared to him.

"Everything all right, Martha?" she asked as gently as possible.

Like a switch had been flipped, Martha snapped back into action. "Yep, looks fine." She tightened her grip on the Doctor's arm. "Well, as fine as we could hope a hole through the arm could look, anyway." She grabbed the Doctor's right hand and placed it firmly over the wound, standing up and stretching as he winced slightly at the added pressure. "We need to get somewhere sterile and I'll take care of it from there." She pointed at the Doctor. "In the meantime, don't let go."

The Doctor gave a firm nod. "Yes, Doctor Jones."

Donna frowned. She hadn't heard too much about Martha from the Doctor. The only thing she knew for certain was that there were a great many regrets between the Time Lord and this particular companion. It wasn't like with Rose, with him so consumed with grief that the blonde invaded his every thought, intrusive and full of sorrow and an infinite sadness directed toward what might have been.

No, Martha was different. With her the Doctor had always had the tendency to say less. To remember less. To avoid thinking about her and, in so doing, avoid the shame. Because even if the Doctor couldn't recognize it himself, Donna certainly could. He had hurt her, this Martha Jones, and somewhere deep down, he had always known it.

Looking at her now, seeing how the Doctor still, even with the shame, failed to see the poorly disguised pain under Martha's surface, Donna couldn't help but wonder why the young woman was still with him. And why the Doctor was so blind to her, this companion who had saved the world. (Probably a few dozen times, actually, given what Donna herself knew about traveling with the man.)

But these, she knew, were thoughts best left to another time. Currently, there was a bleeding alien at her feet that needed to be taken care of.

"Well you heard her. Up we get." Somewhere sterile. Donna wouldn't have exactly called her place sterile – or clean, per se – but it would do. "We'll go to my flat, just round the corner."

Donna and Martha each gabbed a side and slowly hauled the Doctor to his feet, each staying near as they began walking out of the alley, ready to catch him should he fall.

"You moved out of Cheswick?"

Donna rolled her eyes. Things like emotional pain and suffering he overlooked, but moving out on the parents were like nuclear explosions on his radar.

Honestly. She didn't know what she was going to do with him.

"Couldn't live with Mum and Gramps forever, could I? Especially when I didn't know how long I'd be around before _someone_ decided I was worth swinging by to pick up."

"I'm sorry Donna, really I am." He and Martha exchanged a look. "Things have become… Interesting, since I left."

Donna could see that things had not been easy in the time that she was gone. Clearly, had the Doctor been able to, he would have come for her sooner, would have returned to her in a timely fashion and prevented this whole mess.

But he wasn't able to, and now they had this madness to deal with (an insanity that she would never admit she had secretly been longing for, these long months), and Donna realized she had little time to make him feel properly guilty for leaving her behind before she forgave him again.

She was only so good at keeping those sorts grudges.

"'Interesting' isn't the word I'd use for what we've been experiencing," Martha muttered from the Doctor's other side, sounding exhausted.

Donna just grinned, staring up at the Doctor. "Well from the looks of it, this all just seems like it's another day hanging about you." She sighed. "But you better tell me about what particular brand of trouble you got yourself into anyway."

The Doctor used his one minute of unmolested time in Donna's flat to comment on the strategically placed plastic plants, the green walls, and the lovely modernist portrait of her grandfather ("Really – very Picasso-esque. He would have liked it, even. I should know. Real hoot at dinner parties, let me tell you.")

In the next minute he had been manhandled onto the couch, had his coat and jacket forcefully removed from his person, and then had been stripped from the waist up.

And Martha didn't have the decency to ogle even a bit at his chiseled chest.

Instead she went into the kitchen and washed her hands, Donna following her and not-so-discreetly cleaning her flat as she trailed throughout the rooms, gathering things for the procedure.

There were few things in the Doctor's very long life that had seemed as odd as the awkward minutes sitting shirtless in Donna Noble's flat while two women fluttered around him.

Eventually, Martha returned with gloves on and bent over his arm, squinting at the wound and glaring at him every time he so much as twitched.

"You know you don't need to worry," he pointed out to her. "All I need is a few hours and I'll be as good as new." He winked. "One of those Time Lord perks."

"I'm sure," she muttered, stretching the skin around the bullet as he winced, completely ignoring him.

He figured as much.

"Donna, could you please get me the first aid kit, tweezers, the water that's been boiling, and a needle and thread?"

"All yours in a mo," Donna said with a smug smirk at him from the kitchen, going about collecting the requested items.

An hour later the Doctor had been sewn and bandaged up, and he admitted that the whole process had made him feel a bit better. Oh, it still hurt - getting shot was never any fun - but he could feel his body taking over now. After Martha had removed the bullet and connected points A to B, the skin began knitting itself back together, his blood started to make up for the loss it had just sustained, and his strength slowly began to rebuild itself.

He looked up, ready to concoct some way to thank Martha for her help without letting it seem as if she and Donna had been right, and frowned.

Martha had taken off her gloves and was grasping her right, damaged, hand, kneading the delicate muscles while the limb shook slightly in her grip, as if they had been pushed past their every capacity by the recent effort.

"You shouldn't have done that, Martha."

He shouldn't have let her do that.

She grinned weakly. "Yes, well. It was either going to be me testing my long-forgotten surgical skills or you with a gaping hole in your arm."

He smirked. "I, for one, am not offended in the least by displaying my innards to the outside world. You'd be surprised about how many species are sensitive about that."

"You know, I don't think I would be." She sighed, wincing as she stopped her ministrations on her hand. "How are you feeling?"

The Doctor smiled enthusiastically. "Good. Great. Ready to get on out there and stalk our stalkers." He frowned. "What do you call a stalker of a stalker? A super stalker?" He snapped a finger. "Or maybe a stalkhar, sometimes adding an extra letter is all it takes for someone to be all the more impressive."

Noticing that no one was telling him to shut it all ready, he looked more intently at his companion.

She was staring at her hands – one steady, the other trembling – as if they didn't belong to her, expression tinged with something dark, something scared.

"Martha?"

She shook herself. "I'm fine." She smiled at him. "But tired."

"Well I've gone and done it." Suddenly Donna had made her way back into the room after a long absence (during which the flat had gotten conspicuously tidier), carrying a tray and cups with a pot in the dead center. "I made tea."

"Donna Noble!" The Doctor exclaimed, laughing at the sight. "Gone nine months and you've become a homemaker." He grinned. "The effect I have on women..."

"Shut it, you," Donna muttered, putting down the tea with a clink onto the coffee table. "And cover yourself up, would you?" She grabbed the throw blanket from the arm of the sofa and tossed it to him, gesturing to his chest. "I don't need to see that, thank you very much."

Why was no one appreciating his chiseled chest?

With a sigh, he draped the blanket over his shoulders as Donna looked to Martha, taking a seat on the chair across from the sofa.

"Would you like a cup, Martha?"

Martha shook her head, standing up from her position next to him on the couch. "No, no. Thank you, but I think I better get some rest, if that would be all right?"

"After the day you had, I'm surprised you've lasted this long." Donna pointed down a hallway. "Guest bed's in the back, third door on the right."

"Thank you, Donna, for everything." She sent them a tired grin. "See you both in the morning, then."

"Night," Donna replied merrily.

They watched Martha make her way down the hall and close the door to the guest room, at which point Donna turned to the Doctor and fixed him with a blank, terrifying, glance.

Usually, Donna was more overt with her murderous intentions. This blankness was scary if only because of its unfamiliarity.

The Doctor wrapped the blanket more firmly around himself and took a deep breath.

"I didn't mean to leave you for so long."

"I know," Donna said.

"And I didn't even _want_ to leave you to begin with. You're the one who wanted to take a break."

"I know," Donna said.

"And I know that it doesn't change a thing, but I am sorry."

"I know," Donna said.

There was a silence in which the Doctor felt decidedly awkward, so he decided to study his highly fascinating trainers instead of looking at the serene redhead across from him.

He really needed get them cleaned, actually. He made a mental note.

And then promptly ran out of things to distract himself.

So, as was his way, he started talking again.

"Is that it, then?"

Donna blinked pointedly at him. "What do you think?" She stood up from her chair and began to make her way around the table toward him.

The Doctor stood up frantically. "Now, look, Donna." He held up a hand when she was standing next to him, hoping to ward her off while the other clung to the blanket. "I did apologize and I really do mean it, so if you could just please not-"

Donna reached forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

"-shout."

Thoroughly out of sorts, he wrapped the formerly defensive hand around Donna's back.

She pulled away from him, pointing an accusatory finger his direction. "You get one freebee, you hear?"

"That's… unexpectedly generous of you."

Donna laughed, walking back to her chair and sitting down once more. "And don't you even think of trying my patience about it either. Nine months of my mother you left me with. That should be declared cruel and unusual punishment."

The Doctor sat as well, grinning. "That bad?"

"Do you see this flat? Why do you think I got it? For its stylish lime walls?"

He threw an admiring glance around the flat. "They are lovely." The Doctor quite liked lime.

"Driving me mad, that woman was." Donna let out a sigh. "After a month I knew I had to get out. So I went round the corner, got a job, saved up, and got myself a flat."

The Doctor leaned forward. "What's your job then?"

Donna shot him a warning look. "You're going to love this."

He all but clapped his hands in excitement. "Oh, won't I just."

"I protect Parks."

The Doctor, remembering the very incident that had brought about their separation to begin with, broke into chuckles. "Seriously?"

Donna nodded, a pinched grin on her face. "Now I'm the one burning down councils put up those ridiculous benches." She pointed another accusatory finger at him. "You're a terrible influence!"

"If I recall, Ms. Noble, in spite of your many protests, you're the one who supplied me with the match that set that alien senate on fire."

She laughed. "Well if you're going to get in trouble you might as well go about it properly, honestly."

He felt his grin spread from ear to ear, just like it always did whenever he was around Donna.

She was good at that – making him face every emotion in its entirety. She wouldn't let him hold back or detach, could never allow him to get away with any sort of slight directed toward her or those they met along the way.

Donna, more than anyone else, forced the Doctor to live life according to her, human, terms rather than his own. And that included all of the joys, hardships and consequences of a life that is never to be taken for granted.

He smiled at her. "I've missed you, Donna."

"Have you?" She leaned forward. "How long has it been for you then?"

"Ten days."

She glared at him. "Prat."

"What? I have missed you!"

"For ten days! I've been left without you for nearly a year, and been stuck with my mum for most of it!"

They stared at each other for a beat before breaking into laughter.

Donna couldn't _stand_ life with her mother.

The laughter slowly died down. "Oh, I've missed you too, Doctor." She reached forward, grabbing his hand in her own. "Just remember – you don't get to leave me behind again, you hear?"

He returned her grip. "Wouldn't dream of it."

The silence that followed was warm and welcoming, like coming back home.

It was interrupted with the sound of a loud crash coming from the guest bedroom.

The Doctor and Donna exchanged a quick look before he released her hand, letting the blanket fall to the floor as he raced down the hallway.

He opened the door, flicking on a light and taking quick stock of the situation. Martha's jacket resting on a bedside table, the lamp that had been knocked to the floor, Martha, fully dressed on top of the blankets, twisting slightly in sleep.

Donna stepped in behind him, letting out a sigh of relief. "It was the lamp, then." She smiled up at him. "Mystery solved."

"Not quite." He approached the bed, frowning as Martha continued to shift from one position to another and seeing the sweat beading on her skin.

He reached out, brushing a hand against forehead, eyes widening at the heat he could feel.

Martha leaned into the touch (and his cool skin) and whispered a nearly inaudible, "Tom?"

Not, however, inaudible enough for Donna not to catch it. "Tom?" she repeated. She glanced back at the Time Lord. "Well that's a blow to your ego, isn't it?"

The Doctor ignored her, getting more concerned the as more time passed. A brain can only get so hot before it becomes damaged. He gripped her shoulders and shook her roughly. "Martha?"

Recognizing his seriousness, Donna raced around the bed, observing Martha with the same intensity from the other side. "Why isn't she waking up? What's wrong?"

"I don't know." He shook her again. "Martha? Martha can you hear me?" He let go over her, allowing Martha's body flop back to the bed as he began to pace, running his hands through his hair frantically and doing his best to convince himself not to pull it all out. "Oh, this is bad. Very bad. Very, very bad. So bad that there's no word for it other than bad." It was never a good sign, when the Doctor ran out of words.

"Bad. Understood." Donna gave a firm nod. "And what does that mean for us, exactly?"

He stopped moving, focusing his gaze back on the young doctor. "It means that someone or something's in there, keeping her trapped."

"Do you think it is that Rossi bloke who was having you shot at?" Donna asked.

The Doctor didn't know. It must have been, would have made sense. He had been torturing Martha physically and emotionally for a year, there was no reason why he wouldn't have the resources or the motivation to spread such torment to a mental sphere as well.

But that still didn't explain why.

Not that it mattered at the moment. All that mattered was waking Martha up, and doing it before any more damage was wrought.

He turned to his conscious companion. "Donna, I have to do something."

"Good." She waited a beat. "What?"

"Something I don't think Martha's going to be too pleased about when she wakes up."

"You'll be able wake her up, then?"

The Doctor made his way back to the bed, kneeling on the floor at Martha's side so that he was level with her. "I'd better be."

"Well," Donna muttered. "That was almost encouraging. What are you going to do, again?"

He carefully maneuvered Martha onto her back, sending Donna a grave look. "Enter her mind."

She furrowed her brow. "You can do that?"

"Alien."

She shook herself. "Right."

"I'm going to be seeing what she sees, feeling what she feels." He looked at Martha's feverish, strained face, and didn't imagine that such empathy would be a pleasant experience.

He turned his attention back to Donna. "You have to make sure she stays still, Donna. If you see her moving out of my grasp, or me trying to move my hands from her temples, you have to stop us however you can. If we lose contact, Martha's mind could be lost."

Donna gave a firm nod.

"I cannot be disturbed, no matter what. Do you understand?"

"Not a bit," she admitted with a smirk. Nevertheless, Donna positioned herself on the bed, eyes tracked onto Martha's temples. "Go on, then. And don't think that you're not going to have to explain this to me later."

The Doctor grinned, placing his fingers at the delicate junctures on either side of Martha's face. "Be back."

And then, for just an instant, everything went black.

_She's not running now._

_She should be. She should be sprinting, screaming. Soot should be in her hair, her clothes should be filthy and everything should be burning._

_But instead she's walking. She's in her black dress, her high heels, walking in a straight line toward a boat at the horizon, and everything is quiet._

_There's still fire though. On the edges, trying to push its way into the scene. Attempting to make the reenactment more vivid._

_But they don't, because standing between her and the flames are thousands of faces. All of them staring down at her in accusation, utterly silent in their judgment and scorn while she walks to her boat._

_And all the while the faces are slowly being consumed by flames._

The Doctor still had an awareness, watching the dream. There was Martha's thoughts and then there were his own, gently submerged under her consciousness. The difference being that his perception wasn't muddled by this foreign sleep, wasn't being clouded or influenced by some outside force.

So it was very easy to adjust his awareness. To shift away from Martha's dreams and move to her memories.

Because the Doctor could tell, could feel from Martha's sense of familiar terror, that this dream wasn't based on fears alone.

It was based on experience.

A synaptic connection made here, a slight, careful push through Martha's dream there, and the Doctor saw a city burning from Martha's eyes.

There was fear. So intense that he could almost taste it like the sulphur in the air.

Martha was absolutely terrified.

"What's happening?" a voice asked to their left, Martha turning and facing a man with a heavy accent (Japanese, he noted) and a look that appeared to be as scared as Martha felt.

She took a breath, and the Doctor felt the terror being pushed aside.

"The Master is sending a message to those trying to resist. He's taking out Japan."

"Taking out?"

"He's destroying the island. Entirely."

"God."

"Come on." Martha grasped the man's hand and ran, and it was only then that the Doctor noticed that they were outside, that bombs were falling from the sky, that the Toclafane were chasing people like prey, and that everyone around them was screaming. "Get to your family, bring them to harbor as quickly as you can," she yelled. "I'll stay as long as possible, but hurry."

_Please. Just someone. All I need is one._

They reached a fork in the road and Martha released his hand. "Go!"

He did, and Martha ran the opposite direction, seeming to take in each horrifying sight she passed as she dashed toward the dock. Amidst the crumbling buildings and descending bombs, Martha tried to catalogue each scream, mark every unnatural twist of the bodies she left in her wake, to see each and every face of every person she was leaving behind.

If she couldn't save them, the least she could do was see them.

_They need to be remembered, all of them._

And she would, the Doctor knew. In her dreams, she wouldn't be able to escape any of those faces.

Martha finally reached the boat. She waited until the dock was on fire before pulling away from the harbor.

Her companion, whoever he had been, hadn't made it to her in time.

_She's on the boat and she's pulling away from the island, the faces staring after her, engulfed in the blaze but still, always, staring._

_She looks away, to the water flowing at the side of the boat, the push and ebb of it around the smooth sides of the vessel, and she allows herself to momentarily dismiss the faces in the flames._

_Until there's a jarring bump against the side of the ship, and she staggers against the edge. She searches the calm sea for the source of the disturbance, and she sees a body, facedown, floating an arm's length away._

_And even though she knows what's coming, she can't stop herself from reaching out and turning the body over._

_Leo's lifeless gaze rests on her, and she feels sick._

_In the distance she can see two other forms rocking on the waves: Shonara and Keisha. A family united, even in death._

_Her boat pushes past the bodies, staying the course._

The Doctor took the images with a mental steadiness that was only possible due to his nine hundred years of watching – causing – death.

But that didn't mean that he was any less horrified by it.

He tentatively dug into Martha's memories, desperately hoping that the dream had nothing to do with reality.

But it did.

Martha was running through the streets of London, hiding from the Toclafane as they slaughtered a tenth of the population of humanity.

Again, he felt her terror, but also her determination.

She still had hope, this version of Martha.

She also had a destination, if no plan. That would come later. First, she needed resources, connections.

And the only connection she still had in this world was her brother.

He would be at Shonara's place with her father, a widower retired from the military with plenty of equipment at his disposal. Just what Martha needed, at a time like this.

She made it to the small mansion without being noticed, her TARDIS key taunt around her neck, knocking frantically on the door when she arrived.

No answer.

Knowing the risk, that the Master had every cell phone rigged to the Archangel network, Martha opened up her phone to dial anyway.

She had to contact Leo.

When the phone rang at her ear, an echo sounded in the distance.

Martha frowned, following the sound behind the house, opening the fence and entering into the garden where there was a small stream bordering the property.

The stream where four bodies were floating, face down, in the water, Leo's phone ringing on the bank.

Martha ran to the forms, wanting to shout out, call for her brother, but not daring to.

The key didn't disguise sound.

She waded into the stream, kneeling by the nearest body and turning it over, ignoring the deathly chill as the water soaked her through.

Leo's eyes were wide, his mouth open as if in shock, and in the middle of his chest was the bullet that had pierced his heart.

Martha gagged, tripping away from the body and just managing to reach the bank before she threw up.

Later, Martha examined the bodies. Shonara's father was further down the stream, the gun in his hand still warm.

Military men didn't surrender.

Leo had died standing between his father-in-law and his family, trying to stop the man from doing something that couldn't be undone.

_Too late._

Martha stayed in the garden for hours, crying. She did what she could for the bodies of her brother and his family (she didn't touch the other one) and then left.

She had a mission to complete

_She reels away from edge of the boat, gagging, tripping, falling._

_And is caught by strong hands._

_She glances up, and he's there. Unshaven in a suit and tie, grinning down at her, breaking her fall._

_He smiles and she responds, tracing his collarbone through the fabric, feeling him shiver._

_Then he staggers, his hands on her shoulders, his blood on her hands (always, forever on her hands) and his life at her feet._

_She goes down with him, shaking his shoulders, screaming his name._

_She's watched him die so many times._

_"Tom? No, Tom, please!"_

_He's already dead, and when she turns away from him she sees the Doctor, gun emitting a cloud of smoke in his hand, and a wide grin on his face. _

The Doctor recoils from the image, and somewhere in the real world he hears a deafening screech and hands clamping down on top of his own.

But he doesn't have time for that. Because this, it can't be true.

He digs, with less care than he should in his panicked state, through Martha's memories, calling forth the one he needs, beckoning it to him.

And this time Martha's happy.

"That was absolutely terrible."

They were in an alleyway, a back exit to the building they had just left, and were slowly making their way to the main street.

"It was not!"

"Was too."

Martha hit the tall man who she was walking with hand-in-hand with her handbag.

"Ouch!" he brought his free hand to rub his shoulder in mock pain. "I don't know if I want to take this abuse, Doctor Jones."

"It was theater," Martha said pointedly, ignoring his protests. "Just because nothing exploded on-stage does _not_ mean it wasn't worthy of your attention. Or a shave." She reached up a hand, rubbing a stubbly cheek. "What's this anyway?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, pinching said cheek gently. "Not exactly dressed to impress, are you?"

"I'm in a suit!" he said indignantly, stopping their progress and grabbing her pinching fingers with his own. "I match your dress and everything! That's quite impressive considering that I've been on-call the past three nights, wouldn't you agree?"

"I suppose." Martha sighed. "Although matching with black isn't exactly difficult, is it?"

"You suppose? Not difficult?" He made a theatrical wince. "Doctor Jones, you wound me. Especially unkind considering how horrific that show was."

Martha grinned, gazing up at him guiltily. "It was pretty awful, wasn't it?"

"Dreadful."

"I'm sorry, Tom." She gave her head a light shake, laughing. "I really was trying to give us a little break."

"It was a break!" He frowned thoughtfully. "A rather painful one, sure-"

Martha kicked his shin lightly with her heeled shoe, grinning.

"But a break nevertheless!" Tom amended quickly, giving another wince. "I think I'll somehow be able to find it in my heart to forgive you."

Martha's smile widened. "You spoil me." She went on her toes, searching for his lips.

He bent down, eliminating the distance, kissing her gently. "It's no less than you deserve, love."

And even if he hadn't been able to feel Martha's absolute certainty in this immodest declaration, the Doctor would have known the man's heart just from witnessing the way he looked at her.

Tom Milligan loved Martha Jones.

She smiled against his lips. "Now how am I going to make this up to you?" She released a hand from his grasp, trailing it across the expanse of fabric that covered his collarbone.

Tom vibrated in her hands. "Oh, I think you'll find a way, Doctor Jones."

"I think you're right about that, Doctor Milligan." She leaned forward to kiss him again.

Except, this time, he didn't try to kiss her back.

Instead, there was a _bang_ from behind her followed by a shuddering gasp from Tom, who gripped Martha's shoulder's with both of his hands, bruising her skin. His weight pulled her down with him as he fell.

"Tom?" Some portion of Martha assessed the situation, gathered the data that was necessary. Her hands were already pressed over the wound, were already covered in his blood, and her rational mind had determined, given the point of entry, that if Tom wasn't dead yet he would be soon. "No, Tom, please!"

She looked over her shoulder at the source of the bullet, mind reeling with a thousand thoughts, but none of them more powerful than the knowledge that she had to see who had done this.

For an instant the figure looked petrifying, eyes gleaming white in the distance, gun still smoking, long silhouette cast in front of him.

But in the next instant, the white gleam in his eyes was gone and the murderer morphed back into a boy.

Just a boy.

He looked from the gun in his hand to the body on the ground, to the woman up to her elbows in blood.

He was horrified.

Martha turned back to Tom, took him in, and realized too late that he was dead.

In the last moments of his life, Martha had been looking his murderer instead of telling Tom she loved him.

Another _bang_ sounded behind her followed by a _thump_ as a body hit the ground, but she barely noticed.

She couldn't stop looking at Tom's blood on her hands.

The Doctor took his time opening his eyes.

As a rule, he didn't like to think too much about the sorts of things that would make his mind linger on regret. As old as he was, as many mistakes as he had made, the effects of such remorse would be utterly crippling.

And so, a long time ago he had learned to keep moving – to run as far and as fast as he could and to not look back, because the moment he did would be the moment that he was forced to stop. And then the things he had done, that he had felt, would finally catch up to him.

So he hadn't. Not after the Time War, not when Rose had been taken from him, not when Martha left. He'd never taken the time to stop.

For all that the Doctor could-out think the best minds in the galaxy (galaxies, really. He was, after all, terribly clever), he spent most of his life avoiding his thoughts. The Doctor had spent so much of his time with Martha fleeing from the things he had done, that he never noticed what he had been doing.

He had been breaking her.

Not in the typical sense. Every companion had their breaking point, yes, but Martha refused to snap. Instead she bent. Crippled herself for him in a way he hadn't been able to for himself. She had been slowly crushed under the weight of what he had asked of her without once faltering, without desire for personal gain or reward. She had done it all, suffered everything, simply for him. Because he had asked her to.

Even with her departure, she had remained unbroken but altered, changed in ways he had never thought to suspect. Ways he had never dared to suspect.

Because he had asked so much – too much – from Martha. And she had given to him, sacrificed _for_ him, more than anyone should have ever had to.

He had asked Martha Jones not to break, and she hadn't. But the price of it was more than she ever should have paid. And he, fool that he was, hadn't even known what he had been asking of her. Even now, hadn't known. Had refused to see the damage he had wrought on her simply because she let him. The things she had seen, that she had lived through. He had remained happily oblivious of them all for the fear of regret.

Maybe, this once, he could slow down. Look back, linger, for Martha.

Repay a fraction of the debt he owed this brilliant, fantastic woman.

The Doctor opened his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Title**: Wasteland (10/?)

**Characters**: Ten, Martha, Donna

**Word Count**: 7,438

**Rating**: PG-13

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. sniff

**Spoilers**: Up to "Planet of the Ood." (Sort of.)

**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).

**Author's Notes**: Huge thanks to **eponymousrose** and **persiflage1** for their beta help - none of this would make much sense without them. Concrit is always welcomed, and thank you all for your time and patience.

--

Tension, it seemed, did nothing to soothe Donna's bristly temperament.

For the first few minutes of the Doctor's mind-meld Martian thing, she stared attentively at the alien's hands, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.

After a half-hour, she got bored and began to pace around the room, eyes still glued on the woman laying on the bed and the man kneeling on the floor.

It was odd, watching the two. Martha would whimper and barely a second later the Doctor would wince. She would flinch, and then the Doctor would become rigid.

After another half-hour, she noticed the reactions had reversed. The Doctor would be the first to indicate pain, and then Martha would follow with a similar response, almost like a delayed reply. It wasn't the Doctor anticipating (she didn't care how impressive Time Lords were – psychic mumbo jumbo was too ridiculous even for him), it was more defensive. Feeling it first so that Martha didn't have to.

Except, about every twenty minutes, Martha would become oddly glazed, almost peaceful, and the Doctor's brow would become severe with some sort of torment as he'd cringe and recoil. And then the pause would end, and Martha would be tossing and turning right along with the Time Lord once more.

It was during one of these sessions that the Doctor cried out and began to withdraw his hands from Martha's face.

Donna was screaming the instant she saw the motion, and it took her less than a moment to be across the room and yelling into the Doctor's ear. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?!" With that she clamped her hands over the Doctor's and kept them there, awkwardly sitting half-on and half-off the bed while the other two kept about their less-than-merry stroll through Martha's dreams.

Being the responsible one in the gang, she realized, was an awfully boring gig.

Not long after this revelation, Martha's body relaxed one more and the Doctor's hands began their retreat.

"No you don't!" She tightened her grip on the fingers.

"Donna-"

"I don't care! Martha's the first person I've known who's insane enough to hang around you longer than I have and I need as much help as I can get!"

"Donna, it's okay." She looked up to see the Doctor properly conscious once more, smiling reassuringly. "She's okay, I can let go."

"Oh, well then." She released her grasp and stared at Martha expectantly for a moment. "If she's fine then why isn't she waking up?"

"I put her mind in stasis," he said, sounding infinitely tired as he came to his feet, only to promptly sit down on the bed next to Martha. "Her mind's at peace, for now."

Donna frowned. The Doctor faced dangers and horrors that would terrify even the bravest of men on a daily basis, but very rarely did such adventures make him seem so utterly exhausted. It was almost as if, at a point in Martha's mind, he had been defeated in some way.

Donna began to panic.

"Can you wake her?"

"Yes," he answered instantly. "In a jiffy, actually." He almost sounded surprised. "Not complicated at all, this. Rudimentary stuff. Just influence and manipulation – little actual mind control at all. That's why it's only possible to do it through Martha's dreams. They're using her memories to influence her nightmares because they can't control her any other way." He sent the prone woman a fond grin. "She's too strong while awake, so they've been attacking her when she's most vulnerable." He gave himself a slight shake, still staring at Martha, regret flowing from him in waves.

What had happened in there?

Donna walked around the bed so that she was standing in front of the Doctor, Martha lying peacefully behind him on the bed while he stared at the ground. "What did you see?"

He didn't answer, carefully reaching out and wrapping his hand around one of Martha's. Donna leaned over the Time Lord's bony shoulder, taking note of the jagged scar across the surface of Martha's hand. "Doctor?"

"Terrible things." He finally allowed, gaze hard. "I saw her memories." He let out a bitter laugh "Which were more than enough to give anyone nightmares. But whoever's doing this is morphing them. Changing them. Making them worse."

"Do you think it's Rossi?"

"I don't know," he all but ground out, anger clearly burning beneath the surface. At himself for not knowing, and at whoever had dared to harm his friend.

Donna knew better than to be scared of such fury. In fact, she was pleased by it. The Doctor, a man who spent so much of his seemingly infinite energy trying not to feel, was livid on behalf of Martha Jones.

Between the guilt and the rage, his exhaustion was suddenly easily explained. These were big emotions, for a person still riding the training wheels of feeling.

"There's no reason for it," the Doctor continued, gritting his teeth and staring fiercely down at Martha's hand even while his grip remained gentle. "He has the TARDIS but no way to get in, and doing this to Martha now isn't going to change that. It gains him nothing, not our location, nor our intentions. There's no _reason_ for it."

And the Doctor always needed his logic.

Donna recalled and rearranged information, furrowing her brow in thought. "Maybe it's like you said – influence and manipulation." They wanted to push Martha to the limit, but what kind of limit and to what end? "Trying to make her falter, bending her until she breaks."

The Doctor winced at the phrase and was silent.

Donna waited. It was rare, for him to be in such a chatty mood (in an emotional sense, at any rate. Inane jabber shouldn't be counted for anything more than it was – mindless sounds coming out of a gaping hole), and she suspected that pushing him would end it all abruptly.

"Why her?" he finally asked. "Why not me?"

"Because they think she's the weaker of you two," she replied with certainty.

The Doctor sent her a steely stare. "They're wrong."

Donna returned the gaze with equal seriousness. "I know."

It took more than the Doctor realized, to follow him into the unknown.

He broke the stare, suddenly helpless again. "I didn't realize what I had asked her to do, Donna." He ran his free hand manically through his hair. "I had no idea. All the things-" He cut himself off, taking a breath. "I don't know if I'll be able to make this up to her." He looked up to Donna desperately. "I don't know if she'll ever forgive me."

And she heard the bit he didn't speak. _If I'll forgive myself._

But that was the part he couldn't say, because he hadn't quite gotten there himself yet.

And so Donna Noble, temp and secretary, slowed down for him, this Time Lord of infinite knowledge and wisdom. Getting off the training wheels did, after all, take a great deal of time.

"That's not for you to decide, is it?" she said, nudging his foot with hers. "You have to earn that forgiveness like the rest of us mortals do, and you can't manage that if she's not conscious."

The Doctor smiled hopefully at her. "You think I can make this right."

As if she would let him get cocky.

"I think you _can_ do a great many things. The question is whether or not you actually _will_." She sent him a gentle grin and gestured toward Martha, still sleeping peacefully on the bed. "Wake her up, Doctor."

And just like a fairy tale, he turned, placed his hands on Martha's temples, and closed his eyes.

--

_Everything merges. There's screaming and tears and blood and fire and death and there's so much of it that she thinks she's drowning. _

_Until, all at once, she isn't anymore._

Martha. Martha, wake up.

_And then, for just an instant, everything goes black._

--

Martha woke up burning, suffocated and absolutely terrified.

Her mind screamed _runrunrun_, and she rocketed forward at the command, ready to leap small buildings if she had to so long as she could be safe.

But when she herself flung forward her momentum was abruptly stopped, a cool, solid form halting her progress.

She put her arms in front of her face, cowered, backed away, tried to flee any direction she could.

"Martha! Martha, it's me!"

She knew that voice. Could identify the feeling of slender fingers on her back. Of a rising and falling chest pressed against her forearms, a frantic double heartbeat thrumming through the connected skin.

And there was only a second of doubt, as she recalled the grinning face framed in gun smoke (_not real, not real_), before she felt her body slacken. The need to escape vanished, her fists unclenched and came to rest on either of his shoulders, and her lungs took in a large, cleansing, breath of air.

"I've got you," the Doctor told her, and she was frightened enough to let herself believe it.

She pressed her forehead into the cool (so very cool) valley under the Doctor's chin and tried to center herself.

Her skin still felt like it was burning from the fires, and she was exhausted because of the running, but these were small details.

The important things were that Japan had never been burned, that Leo and his family were still alive, that Tom was still dead, and that the Doctor hadn't killed him.

Already she wanted to call Leo. To give him another ring at two AM complaining about creaking floorboards just to hear his voice. To have him say that Shonara and Keisha were just fine, thanks, and that Martha would know that if she bothered to visit once in a while.

He always had been cheeky.

She wouldn't call, of course, because she knew that it wasn't necessary. But it still took a little time to quell the compulsion.

Once done convincing herself of the reality she lived rather than the one she had imagined, she catalogued the differences between this ordeal and the ones that had come before. There had been more of the dreams, on this occasion. Typically, there was only one scene that lasted an entire night. By the looks of it (the sun still setting through the bedroom window), these three had barely made it two hours. Not an encouraging trend.

On the other hand, beyond the fever and the fatigue, she barely felt the effects from these dreams. Even the nightmare itself had become less vivid at one point, more detached. Like a buffer had come and filtered through the worst of the images, the emotions, as Japan went ablaze. An oh so welcome respite.

All things considered, she was doing just fine, save for the spectacle she had clearly made of herself.

Martha meant to break the silence with a cheery 'hello.'

What came out was an ungodly gurgling sound.

Suddenly Donna made herself known. "Tea. You need tea." Martha peered over the Doctor's shoulder to see the woman dashing about the room, the redhead tilting her head in thought as she paused in her progress. "Tea that hasn't been sitting out on a table for a few hours. A fresh pot then!"

With that she had bustled out of the room, and Martha felt her lips crack into a smile.

She quite liked Donna Noble.

"Hello," the Doctor's voice sounded above her in amusement, head still turned toward Donna's exit. He gave his head a shake and rested his chin on her hair. "How are you feeling?"

Martha cleared her throat. "Fine." Her voice was shockingly quiet as it rasped out of her, and she wished she could blame it on the dreams. But she knew it was more than that.

She was nervous.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you with these silly little nightmares."

She felt the Doctor tense around her, felt the flexing of his jaw on her skull, containing his frustration.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd made him close in on himself again.

Which was what made the words he said next so startling.

"Martha, your well-being could never be a bother to me." He lowered a hand down her back and began to rub soothing circles against it. "And those weren't silly little nightmares." His jaw tensed once more. "Something or someone is manipulating them, making them worse, adding physical manifestations and aftereffects."

She should have been immediately overjoyed by the fact that the dreams weren't natural – that some twisted part of her subconscious wasn't punishing her for surviving while so many others had perished. She should have been thinking about who was responsible, how to find them, make them stop. She should have been imagining reclaiming her dreams again and nights of peaceful sleep.

But instead, the first thing that came to mind was that the Doctor hadn't been pushing her out. That his anger, dissatisfaction, wasn't directed at her. It was aimed toward them, whoever had done this.

Which brought about her second thought. How did he know about 'this' anyway?

"How did you-?"

"I went into your mind to figure out what was causing them." He had stiffened again, but there was no anger in his tone. She felt his fingers withdraw from her slightly, and she tried not to be disappointed.

His skin was just so cool.

She tried to focus. He had gone into her mind. Had seen (felt?) her dreams.

She wasn't pleased about that.

But it was obvious (from his tone, his hesitant touch and the care he seemed to be taking with her) that he had been truly worried by what he saw. That he had done it to protect her.

And suddenly it became clear. "You were the buffer."

She hadn't become detached during the dreams, not at all. The Doctor had simply sheltered her from them. And that explained why she didn't hear thousands of people screaming in her ears, why her stomach was easy in spite of the sight of her brother's dead family, how she didn't feel Tom's blood under her fingernails.

He didn't need to be told what she meant. "I was hoping my consciousness could shield yours a bit, yeah. Although I wasn't certain that it would work." His arms wrapped themselves more firmly about her once more. "There shouldn't be any lingering physical effects this time, except for the heat." He gulped, swallowing some emotion down. It really was helpful, being this close to him, and not just to quell the burning she felt tingling across every expanse of skin. "I wasn't fast enough to block out the flames."

So close to him, she was able to feel so many of the things that he would never let her see.

Martha pressed her cheek more firmly against his neck, almost nuzzling him, wondering what other secrets she could uncover wish just a bit more proximity…

She felt a small chuckle rumble in his chest. "Fortunately, I have a built-in cooling system. One more of my many and impressive skills, I assure you."

With a start Martha's senses came flooding back to her in an embarrassing and abrupt fashion.

She was _nuzzling the Doctor's neck_. Like a cat would but with less dignity, because cats were furry, fluffy and cute and could get away with those sorts of things. She was a grown, respectable woman cuddling up to a man who had all but beaten her away with a stick two years ago.

One bad dream with a hug and she goes bloody barking mad.

She released his shoulders from her grip and pulled away. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize-"

"No, please don't." His arms hadn't relinquished their position, still twined around her. Holding on instead of pushing away.

It was all so disorientating.

"Stay."

And since she was tired and fevered and he was welcoming and cool, she leaned against him again, resting her cheek against his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist.

She just kept telling herself that her willingness had nothing to do with the feel of his skin against hers, the sound of his hearts or the way he made her feel a little dizzy when she was so close to him.

She was only tired, was all.

After enough time had passed and it felt like her skin was no longer on fire, she gently pulled herself away from him.

And, in so doing, fully realized that the Doctor was still shirtless.

Wonderful.

Her cheeks started burning again and she did her best to ignore them, instead looking up at the Doctor's face sincerely. "Thank you, for all of this."

"You don't have to thank me, Martha," he said with a grin, brushing a lock of her sweat-drenched hair out of her eyes. "I want to help."

And looking at him just then, his fingers cupping her ear, one of her hands resting on his chest, she truly believed it.

A part of her knew such faith was dangerous, but the larger, more immediate part didn't seem to care.

Until there was an irritated coughing noise coming from the doorway.

Like an electric current had run through their veins, Martha and the Doctor jumped away from each other, both looking frantically about like they had been caught doing something they shouldn't.

Donna had her arms crossed over her chest and was leaning against the doorway, a smug look on her face as she blinked at them both.

"Tea's done, kiddies." She jerked her head toward the living room. "Come on then."

With a great deal of awkward shuffling and pointed not-staring – a process that made Martha feel as if she was sixteen again – she and the Doctor managed to make their way out into the larger room, Martha plopping into the comfy chair while he sat on the sofa.

Distance, she thought, would be a very good thing right now.

Both Martha and the Time Lord quickly picked up their cups of tea and starting sipping as inconspicuously as possible.

Martha wasn't terribly certain that it was working.

A few moments later Donna appeared out of one corner or another, shoving the Doctor's clean t-shirt and button-up onto his lap with little pretense before sitting next to him on the couch. "Like I said, Martian. Don't need to see that."

Was the Doctor blushing?

"Thanks, Donna," he said, throwing the shirts over his head, the dramatic motions causing him little to no pain.

The doctor part of Martha's brain made a mental note to take out his stitches, before he healed them into his arm.

"How did you get out the blood?" he asked the redhead, grinning a bit as he poked his fingers through the bullet holes.

"Salt."

"Really?" He turned to Martha eagerly. "You hear that Martha? Salt! Who knew?"

Martha nodded with a bit too much enthusiasm and took another sip of tea before she dared to speak. She was just happy the Doctor had more clothes on and less skin she could stare at.

She really was a teenager, wasn't she?

"You're brilliant Donna!" the Doctor said eagerly, buttoning up his shirt and smiling with unwarranted eagerness. "Just brilliant!"

Donna looked skeptically from Martha frantically sipping at her tea to the Doctor's unnaturally wide grin. "Um-hm."

Martha coughed quietly and thought it was a grand time to study her teacup.

After allowing the silence hang for a few, terribly long, moments Donna let out a sigh and stood up. "If we're done with the raging hormones, think we could take some time to regroup?"

"Regrouping!" The Doctor all but shouted from his spot on the couch, bobbing his head keenly at Donna. "To group once more! Sounds fantastic. Dazzling, even. Well, come on then! Let's group!"

Martha and Donna both blinked at him.

"Well, if you'd like, that is." He took another manic sip of tea.

Donna rolled her eyes and began to pace. "Right then." She took a deep breath. "The TARDIS has been taken for unknown reasons by Rodolfo Rossi, an Italian ambassador who has been living in London for the past fourteen months for, according to the people in his offices, 'diplomatic reasons,' correct?"

Martha gave a firm nod mid-sip. All backed up by the research she had done prior to the Doctor's arrival when she was back at Torchwood.

Donna continued. "During these fourteen months, Martha has been under continuous attack as a ploy to get her to contact the Doctor."

The Doctor and Martha shared a nod.

"Rossi has at least three lackeys that go by the names Franklin, Danish and Anders, with Anders clearly in command."

More collective nodding.

"We don't know how Rossi found out about the TARDIS, where he transported it, whether he's human or alien-"

"Alien," the Doctor chimed in.

"Human," Martha corrected, convinced of her original conclusions.

The Doctor simply rolled his eyes in her general direction.

While Donna rolled her eyes at the both of them. "We also don't know if it's just the TARDIS he's after or the Doctor as well."

"TARDIS," the Doctor supplied.

"Both," Martha insisted.

They exchanged annoyed glances.

It was astounding, how quickly the Time Lord could fluctuate from being a beautiful, sexual fixation to an absolute annoyance.

He would, undoubtedly, claim it was a Time Lord talent of some sort.

"If I may?" asked Donna at their interruption.

Martha at least had the decency to look guilty. The Doctor just smiled and said, "Of course!"

Donna graced him with another eye roll as she stopped pacing. "And now he, or likely someone working with him, has started to manipulate Martha's dreams."

"Actually," Martha began. If the secret was out anyway, there was little reason to keep the details back. "That began a year ago." When Tom had died.

From across the room, the Doctor stared at her with an expression that she couldn't quite place.

Donna frowned and gave a determined nod at the information and moved on.

Martha sent her a grateful smile. Dwelling, after all, had little use.

"Anything we're missing?" Donna asked them at last.

The Doctor leaned forward in his seat. "There was something Anders said about the sonic screwdriver back in the alley. He recognized it and then told me I should switch to laser." He sent Martha a significant glance. "He said it was good advice when 'he' had told me to do it."

She gasped, images of the Master pointing his weapon at Jack, the Doctor, Tom flashing through her mind.

No one should have remembered that device.

"He was there."

Donna frowned. "What?"

Martha ignored her, anxiety growing. "He was there and he remembers."

"During the year that wasn't, it was something the Master said to me," the Doctor explained to Donna.

"So?" Donna demanded.

"So nobody on Earth should have any inkling about anything that happened during that year," Martha clarified.

The Time Lord held up a halting finger. "Except for the people who were on the Valiant when we put everything right."

Donna nodded her understanding. "He must have been there, then. Maybe the other minions too." She furrowed her brow, in thought.

Martha shook her head. "I don't recognize him – any of them."

"There were plenty of armed guards in that room when we switched things back again," the Doctor insisted. "Anders and the others could have easily been among them and we wouldn't have known it." He let out an exasperated sigh. "It's the matching uniforms, that does it. How are you supposed to tell one from the next? It's just not practical. At the very least they should come with name tags."

Donna sat down, next to the Doctor, looking at her two companions eagerly. "That could be how Rossi knows about the TARDIS, yeah?"

The Doctor's eyebrow tweaked. "Name tags?"

"No, doofus." Donna gave him a light smack on the arm. "If one or all of his lackeys remembers it from that year."

Martha inclined her head. "It makes sense."

"But it still doesn't explain what he wants," the Doctor pointed out, an observation that effectively silenced the room.

They could speculate all they wanted, but it did little good if they couldn't find who they were looking for and locate the TARDIS. Trying to find _anything_ in London was a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack, but to find someone who could manipulate dreams…

Martha paused. Well, that actually wouldn't be that difficult, would it?

"What about controlling the dreams?"

"What about it?" the Doctor asked, hands pressed to his temples as he thought.

"Not exactly normal, is it? You would need a machine to manipulate them, wouldn't you?"

"Or alien technology," he reminded her.

She dismissed him. "Whatever, but it's unique on this planet, right?"

Across the room, she saw Donna smile in recognition.

"Something that stands out?"

"Something that can be traced?" Donna nudged.

And like someone had turned up the sun, he grinned. "Oh, you two!" He jumped up off of the couch, dashing around the room. "You're brilliant you are." He came to stand by Martha's chair and carefully cradled her head in his hands. "Martha, hold still!"

The contact made her dizzy for a moment, causing butterflies begin to swoosh around pleasantly in her stomach and for her to want lean into his touch. Until she heard a _hmm_ sounding from his fingers.

The sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor was using the sonic screwdriver on her head.

She tried not to sigh.

"Isn't that going to give her cancer or something?" Donna asked from her position on the couch, observing the Doctor's actions warily.

"This? No, of course not."

"It better not," she muttered. "She's still got sense in that trap of hers, and I won't have you sonic-ing it out, you hear?"

"It won't give her cancer, honestly." He paused. "Now, it might slightly rearrange the sound receptors in her brain…"

"_What_?" Martha screeched.

"But there won't be any of that cancer nonsense. Honestly, what century do you think this screwdriver is from?"

Martha was about to yell and shout and demand that he take that thing away from her brain that instant, when he pulled away in triumph.

"Ah-ha! Found it!" He smiled in excitement as he turned to the two women. "Martha, Donna, I'm going to follow the signal."

Martha frowned. "Alone?"

He nodded. "You need to rest." He turned to Donna. "And you need to do as much research as you can on Rodolfo Rossi and Anders."

Donna glared. "You want me to research a man called 'Anders'? Do have any idea how common that name is?"

"But you were a secretary!"

"How does that make 'Anders' any less common?"

Martha resisted the urge to giggle. "I'll help you," she told Donna, grinning. "I really don't need much rest." Something about decoding the puzzle always acted like a shot of adrenalin to her system. She turned to the Doctor. "You'll come back before you do anything?"

He hesitated. "Define 'anything'?"

"Anything dangerous and/or stupid," Donna clarified.

He deflated in disappointment. "Fine, I'll come back."

"Good." Martha tentatively smiled at him, still uncertain as to where they stood, but willing to make this one small risk. "Be careful, Doctor."

He smiled back.

Who said recklessness couldn't be rewarded?

"What she said," Donna added. "Don't get killed."

"Ruin my fun," he grumbled before pressing a few buttons on the screwdriver and dashing out of the flat. "I'll be back!" he threw over his shoulder as the door slammed shut behind him.

"Right then." Donna stood up from the couch and made her way into the kitchen. "So, Doctor Jones." Disturbing rattling noises sounded from behind her. "I figure we can do what the Doctor asked and spend hours looking for unspecific and unhelpful information." She popped out of the kitchen, bottle of wine and opener in one hand and two glasses in the other. "Or we could not and say we did."

An hour later, Martha was on her second glass and Donna her third.

"It's all mad!" Donna screamed and they both laughed.

And it did sound mad. The walking fat, Pompeii and the Ood. Mad and brilliant and amazing all at once.

Martha grinned. "Sounds wonderful."

"It was," Donna agreed, still laughing a bit. Then, her expression changed, became a bit more serious. "But not all of it."

"Yes, well." Martha took a small sip of wine. "I'd know a little about that, too."

She felt more than saw Donna observing her, seeming to catalogue her reactions and temperament, seeming so careful in her studies.

Which made it all the more surprising when the redhead blurted out, "You love him, don't you?"

Martha sputtered a bit, only just saving her tank top from the red wine. "What?"

"Sorry, sorry!" Donna had the grace to look ashamed. "I've got a mouth on me that doesn't take much account of my head. I'll say anything the instant the thought comes to me, not thinking about a thing. It's too personal, I know." She leaned forward. "But do you?"

Martha laughed, awkwardly groping for a napkin and avoiding Donna's far too perceptive eyes. "No more than anyone who travels with him does, I'd guess."

Donna scoffed. "Well I can't speak for the others, but I know I don't want to pull him into a broom closet and have little tiny Time babies."

She gaped. "Neither do I!"

"Uh-huh." Donna certainly didn't sound convinced. "I'm not daft, you know. I did see that little exchange you two had, Doctor Jones, with the eyes and the staring and the bated breath. You would have burnt the rest of his clothes right off him if you had looked at him any harder."

Martha felt her cheeks burning again. "That's not true!"

Donna blinked pointedly, and Martha promptly realized it was useless.

"Okay, maybe it's a little true," she said. "But that, what I have with him, isn't love."

The grin on the redhead's face could have spanned the continent it was so big. "Ah-ha! There's someone else, then! Excellent. You wouldn't want a tiny wisp of a thing like him anyway, not with a real man back home. So, tell me about him!"

Martha allowed herself a small smile. "I did have a fiancé. But-"

"Did he cheat on you?" Donna interrupted, staring at her fiercely. "The bastard. Never trust men, no matter what species. They say that they love you, that they want to marry you, that they're going to have their children with you. And then you find out that they've been scheming with a spider alien out to destroy the world and that you were just a way for him to wreck said destruction…"

Martha stared at Donna in what she hoped didn't appear to be complete terror.

"Sorry. This isn't about my relationship issues." She shifted on her seat and focused her attention on Martha once more. "What did he do, luv?"

"He died," she said. "Was murdered, actually." She let out a bitter chuckle. "Very inconsiderate of him, really." Martha finished off her glass.

Donna was silent for a moment. "Well. There I go again, opening my mouth without a shred of sense." She leaned forward, placing a gentle hand on Martha's. "I'm sorry. I had no idea-"

"It's okay." And it was.

Martha quite liked Donna Noble.

"Was it Tom? From the dreams?"

She nodded. "He's in most of them, one way or another. And the year that wasn't." Another off-putting laugh escaped her lips. "It's cruel, really. He died on the same day he did during that year. Tomorrow's the anniversary. Was at the same time, too."

It was funny, how some days you forgot and some you didn't. Martha forgot appointments, tests, birthdays and weddings, but she never could forget the exact date, down to the minute, that Tom died.

She looked at Donna desperately. "A million, billion things changed since we put everything right. Horrible things that you wouldn't believe just disappeared in the blink of an eye. But for all of that, I couldn't save Tom." She felt moisture building in the back of her eyes, but she didn't have the strength to stop it. "In that other world I let him die so I could live – so I could save the Doctor." She sighed as she felt a tear fall. "And that was the one thing that didn't change."

And in that instant she felt ashamed. For still wanting the Doctor, even now, after Tom had loved her so completely, so well. After she had loved him back. And after knowing that the way she desired the Doctor could never be the way that he desired her.

She betrayed Tom - the man who had given everything for her twice - with every longing she had for the Time Lord, a man who had two hearts but no room for her in them.

"Why do you do it, Martha?"

Martha looked up, wiping at her eyes and holding back tears, to concerned gaze of Donna Noble staring back at her. "Hm?"

"Stay with that sliver of an alien with a gob the size of the Atlantic after everything that's happened?" Donna grinned, no less worried, but clearly trying to spread some humor.

Martha laughed. "Same reason you do, I imagine." She sighed. "For better or for worse, I'm more when I'm with him. He's turned me into a different person, a stronger person."

"But at what cost?"

One that was high enough so that she wasn't certain she didn't regret it.

But Martha knew better than to say a thing like that.

Donna noticed her tentativeness. "Your memories the Doctor saw-"

Martha's head perked up.

"-he didn't say it, but I think they terrified even him."

Martha frowned. "My memories?"

"When he was in your head."

"He saw my memories?"

Dreams were one thing. They were subconscious. Truth mingled with fantasy. The unreal cloaking the real so all that could be uncovered were hazy shadows. What's more, the dreams the Doctor had seen hadn't even been the work of her subconscious. Instead they had been the concoctions of someone else, someone external to herself who played on her fears. To see those wasn't a violation, not really. It was a glimpse that the Doctor shouldn't have seen, yes. But he had been trying to help her, to protect her. To find what was causing the nightmares and put a stop to them.

But memories. That was something that was altogether different. The things she had seen, that had been the fodder for those dreams… Those were things she hadn't wanted another soul to witness. That she was still trying to forget. Those were personal, private, moments that exposed her weaknesses as nothing else was capable of. He had seen her at her most vulnerable, had laid her bare for his viewing pleasure, for no greater purpose than that. No protection or halting of pain.

He hadn't _needed_ to see those memories. He had wanted to, and he could, so had.

Martha felt her insides freeze and had to stop herself from shivering.

She felt sick.

Donna's expression hardened as she saw Martha's mood change. "I thought you knew."

It was all Martha could do to keep her body still and her face serene.

There was more to this situation than she was seeing right now, odds and ends that were beyond her infuriated vision. She knew that, on some level, all of the information she couldn't bear to look at was sectioned off and waiting for her to be able to approach it at a later time.

But at the moment she couldn't stop thinking about what a fool she had been to believe in him again.

There was a tense quiet, Donna staring attentively at Martha and Martha staring distractedly at nothing, when an odd chiming noise shattered the silence.

Her mobile.

With a start she rose from her seat, heading to the spare room and her jacket. "I thought I turned it off."

In fact, she knew she had. It had felt cruel to do so, to cut herself off from her family after Tom's house had been targeted, but experience had taught her how necessary it was.

She reached the room and her jacket and pulled her phone out of the pocket. "It's my brother." She called back to Donna. "Better take it and tell him to bugger off."

She had wanted to know if he had been all right anyway.

She flipped open her phone. "Leo?"

"Martha," he sounded almost surprised to hear her.

"Leo, why are you calling me?"

"You mean beside the fact that your house got destroyed in a shoot-out and no one's been able to contact you since?" He scoffed. "That I'm getting through to you now's a miracle."

Not a topic to dwell on. Martha changed the subject. "How are Mum and Dad?"

"Worried."

Leo was awfully stubborn.

"Look, Martha, what's going on?"

Martha clenched her jaw, determined. "It's safer if you don't know."

"Right. Of course it is." He laughed cynically. "It's all safer if I don't know what's happening in my own life! And don't try to tell me you don't have ideas about everything that's been going on. You disappearing, accidents at work, your patients dying." He sighed. "Your keeping me safe is going to kill me some day, you know. And it's not getting any better now, with Keisha getting sick-"

Martha saw an image of her niece flash through her mind, laughing and playing in a park last spring, the last time she had seen her. "Keisha's sick?" The image twisted, the girl looking frail, choking. Dying.

"Yeah, some sort of flu. Her mum and I have been up for days trying to get her to sleep, and eat, all the good it's doing. At first we thought it was a stomach ache, but after so long-"

"I'm coming over."

Really, there was no choice in the matter at all.

"What?"

"Keisha might need a doctor and what do you know, here I am. Convenient having a medic in the family, isn't it?"

Leo sounded suspicious. "And if you do come over will you tell me what the bloody hell is going on?"

"Yes."

There was a pause on the other end. "Why are you so worried, Martha?"

She wasn't going to tell him that she thought his daughter had been poisoned. Not if she didn't have to.

"I'll be over in a bit."

Martha closed and turned off her phone, snatched her jacket and rapidly made her way to the door of Donna's flat.

"Sorry but I've got to go."

Donna was standing in a second, trailing her to the door.

Martha didn't stop. "My niece is ill, and knowing what these people have done before…" She wouldn't finish that thought, that sentence.

Because Keisha wasn't going to die.

"I have to go."

With that she had opened the door.

"Martha, wait!" Donna grasped her hand. "Wait for the Doctor to get back, then we can all go."

Martha shook her head. "There might not be enough time. When Rossi wanted to make it quick, the poisons wouldn't take more than a few days to kill the victim. I can't wait any longer."

"Fine, then I'll come with you." Donna made a move to grab a coat back inside.

"Better not," she said, halting the redhead's progress. "The Doctor would be worried when he got back." She sent Donna a wink, feigning a good humor that she didn't feel. "Besides, this is something for a doctor, a real one, to take care of." She backed away from the door and into the night outside. "Stay here and wait for me before you head off anywhere."

"Well at least give me Leo's address and the Doctor and I will meet up with you!" Donna called after her.

Martha stopped, staring at the woman severely. "No, I'm not taking him to my family, not at a time like this."

And it almost hurt, how crushed Donna looked just then. "You don't trust him anymore."

Martha's insides, still frozen, turned to stone. "I trust the Doctor to do what he feels he has to. I can't afford to trust him more than that."

With that Donna seemed to deflate, resigned to Martha's course of action.

"Don't leave without me!" she shot back to the redhead, dashing out of the flat much like the Doctor had some time before. "I'll be back as soon as I can!"

--

The Doctor had been led to a park.

It had taken a few hours and it was night now, so it was hard to tell, but he was almost certain he was standing in a park.

Of course, it was a lovely park, with not a few grand statues and the ilk all about, but there was nothing particularly extraordinary about it.

But, for the sake of thoroughness, he decided he might as well give the place a proper snoop, powering up the sonic screwdriver and beginning his search anew.

Eventually, he tracked the signal to its exact origin point, a small metallic box that seemed to be bolted to the ground or the bedrock underneath it.

A remote power source. Nothing unusual about that. Not terribly helpful, of course, but not odd either.

It was only after he had dusted the device off and saw the name emblazoned on its side that he began to become truly wary.

With a start he backed away from the box, his first instinctual need to get away from the information that didn't make sense - _couldn't_ make sense. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, started analyzing the bit of metal, fought the urge to tear it apart, examine it in pieces, destroy it now rather than admit that his past had come back to haunt him again.

The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that he had made a promise to Donna and Martha, a pledge he couldn't afford to break, not now when everything was so uncertain.

He retreated from the power source and ran, heading back to Donna's flat, cursing himself for making a promise he had no choice but to keep.

The word on the side of the box had been Archangel.

--

Leo snapped the mobile shut with a scowl, offering the device palm-up to the room at large.

Anders smirked at him as he snatched it from the man's limp hand. "Well done. Very convincing."

"You have my wife and daughter held at gunpoint," he spat.

The hostage shot a glance to the next room, the woman sitting on a chair with her frightened child in her lap, sobbing silently while Dannish held his cocked gun near their faces.

Leo Jones shot a dirty glance back to Anders. "Of course it was convincing."

Anders' grin only got wider.

"Now let them go," the boy demanded. "I've done what you've asked, Martha's on her way and she doesn't suspect a thing." He paused, looking at Anders desperately. "Let my family leave."

He had tried, Anders noted, to humble his tone a bit. Less righteous rage and more supplication. Not enough, of course. The boy was too arrogant by half, and it's not as if he would have been able to convince Anders in any case. Still, it was nice to see them try, clinging onto a fruitless remnant of hope. It made things such fun, stamping that faith out for them.

"No. I don't think so." Anders circled around their captive, nodding to Franklin who gripped Leo's arms and locked them behind his back. "I think, we're going to keep your family right here. And I think that if you or your sister does anything at all-" he waved an arm about, gesturing vaguely as he made his way back to Leo's face, grinning millimeters away from the boy's scowl "-unseemly, we'll shoot your daughter first."

Leo lunged forward, teeth bared, almost growling.

The ringleader jumped away, Franklin only just containing the hostage as the boy struggled, arms trying to slash out at his captor.

Anders laughed. "So testy." He patted Leo's head, causing the boy's struggles to increase and Franklin to send him a longsuffering glare as the henchman tightened his grip.

He ignored them both, walking to the small flat's window and staring down at the street below. "Come out come out wherever you are, Martha Jones." He smirked. "We're waiting."


	11. Chapter 11

**Title**: Wasteland (11/14)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha, Donna  
**Word Count**: 5,929  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. *sniff*  
**Spoilers**: Up to "Planet of the Ood." (Sort of.)  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: It has been around two years since I last updated this, gang. Shame on me. Last week I got another review on , felt like a jerk, and decided to put the pedal to the metal and do my best to finish this puppy. I've got an outline for the remaining chapters, I'm about a fourth of the way through the next section, and I'm ready to finish this WIP of death. Bring it on, world. Bring it. (But please don't cause I'm super busy right now...) No beta, not British, and as such I have a deep need of concrit. Thanks and hope you enjoy! (PS. Please forgive the wonky updating and 'chapter' breaks. hates me and all I stand for.)

/

The Doctor ran into the flat screaming.

"Donna!"

In retrospect, this might not have been the most rational entrance to make, but he was a bit too preoccupied by the possibility of his nemesis rising from the dead (again) to care.

"Ahhh!"

Unfortunately, Donna most certainly _did_ care, especially since said screaming and the jumping that ensued caused her to upset her tea onto, well. Everything else in proximity.

"Doctor," she grumbled after the dust had settled and she was left dripping earl gray. The Doctor could hear the homicidal undertones in her greeting.

Best get her thoughts focused on something other than killing him, then. Luckily enough for him, the fate of the world was at stake. Convenient, that.

"Donna, there's this box in the park, and the Master with Archangel and being dead but not, and we've got to go now!"

Donna blinked at him.

"Come on!" He poked his head into the hallway and hollered, "Martha!" before running back to the front door, holding it open and making a shooing gesture. "Let's go."

Donna walked slowly from the living room to blink at him some more.

He bounced nervously in place. "This is us. Leaving. Yes?"

There was another round of pointed blinking.

The Doctor sighed. "What did I do? The tea thing? Sorry about that. Should have used better judgment and all."

Donna simply stalked up to him and smacked him, hard, on the arm.

"Ow!" He rubbed at the spot. "I said I was sorry!"

"She didn't know!" She hit him again.

He cowered, utterly confused by her anger. "What?"

The beating continued. "She didn't know that you had gone bumbling about in her memories, you prat!"

The Doctor pulled off an impressive flinch-shrug. "So?"

"So?" Donna crossed her arms in front of her chest and sent him a piercing stare. "Don't you think you need some permission for that?"

"B-but-" he sputtered.

"Right, sorry. Big Time Lord head of yours, can't wrap your mind around our little human oddities, can you?" She punched him again.

"Stop hitting me harder! I didn't say anything!"

That, it seemed, didn't do a thing to lessen his culpability. "Let me ask you something, space man. Would you like either of us to see what happened to you during that year? Or during the Time War?"

A familiar chill washed over him, the one that came every time the war was mentioned.

He opened his mouth.

"No, you wouldn't," Donna answered for him, stare becoming a bit kinder. "Because what happened to you isn't something you want to share with anyone, aren't things you want to relive yourself much less have somebody else go poking through." She took a step towards him. "Do you think that the stuff of Martha's nightmares is any less horrific to her than your own? That she would be willing to share her demons when you won't even talk about yours?"

The Doctor felt like a blow had been delivered to his chest.

He could see how his actions affected others – could see them perfectly, spanning throughout time and across galaxies. He guided himself by these reactions, by the cause and effect of his insertion throughout history. How he impacted others, impacted time, defined and guided him, perhaps more than anything else, and so he took care to see it all as thoroughly as possible.

Why then, couldn't he see Martha?

"I didn't think-" He stopped himself.

He, the last Time Lord in existence, hadn't taken the time to think. He could all but hear Rassilon thrashing bloody murder in his grave.

There was a moment of silence before Donna gave his shoulder an understanding pat.

Her way of breaking the tension.

"But you looked at them to help her, right?"

The Doctor tugged his hair.

Her eyes narrowed at the non-response. "Martha was upset because she thought you went meandering through her thoughts without need, but she's just confused, right?" Her voice rose disturbingly with every word.

"Well, strictly speaking, I suppose I didn't _have_ to see-"

She smacked upside the head with the same hand that had been patting him a moment ago.

"Ow!"

Donna began to furiously pace in front of him. "Her fiancé died, her family was terrorized. She went through that year, that horrible year that neither of you speak of, and then she let it _keep_ happening two more years for you."

The Doctor held her gaze as steadily as he could.

It was all true.

"And then you, genius that you are, intrude on her memories because you couldn't keep your curiosity in check!" She let out a huff, stalked in front of him a few more times, and then turned the full power of her reprimanding stare upon him. "When Martha gets back you are going to grovel as you've never groveled before, do you understand me?"

His head jerked up. "She's not here?"

"No, she left for her brother's." She frowned. "Quite strange, really."

The Doctor felt a nervous sort of tension building in him. He took a step toward Donna, eyeing her intently. "How was it strange?"

"The time for one thing. The call came in about a half-hour ago. What was that? One in the morning?" She shook her head. "Not exactly prime phoning hours. And then Martha was convinced she had turned off her mobile-"

Without a thought the Doctor grabbed Donna's hand and started for the door. "We have to find her."

"What?"

The Doctor continued his stride, not daring to pause, only guessing at how much time they had left.

A mobile doesn't just turn itself on.

Unless Archangel had been activated once more.

And he only knew one person with the knowledge to manage that.

He tightened his grip on Donna's hand. "Now."

"All right." Donna's tone had become serious, reflecting his mood.

Funny, how Donna always seemed to be able to do that.

"But first, let's find out where her brother lives." She released herself from his grip and ran back into the house, grabbing her mobile. "Do you have Martha's folks' number?"

Phone numbers.

In spite of himself, the Doctor felt a satisfied grin spreading over his face. "Archangel."

Donna stared at him quizzically.

He swept a frantic hand through his hair, beginning to dash around the room, feeling the exhilaration of puzzle pieces being put into place. "Everything is tapped!" He snatched Donna's phone away from her, holding it up to her nose as evidence. "That's how he knew I had come back, and how he knew to go after Tish and Leo." He nodded, pacing with the mobile in hand. "Family, they talk, Tish could have mentioned her flat, Leo and his friend at work, the play she and Tom went to see." He snapped his fingers. "Even Martha's patients! Nurses, other doctors, asking for consults." He turned back to his companion, shoving the mobile in front of her once more. "Donna, don't you see? It's all so simple!"

"Yes, well, that's all very nice, but – "

The Doctor frowned, a thought suddenly occurring to him. "Thick!" He yelled, Donna jumping a bit at the noise.

It was so obvious, so simple, so much of a given that he promptly slapped himself on the forehead repeatedly. "Thickness is what my brain has become! Thick and stupid and dull with age!" He swung the mobile under Donna's nose and pointed at the key hanging around her neck in the same instant. "The perception filter! What Martha's been using all this time to keep herself safe! It only ever worked because Archangel was in place! All of her dreams, the boy who murdered Tom, even the fact that her family didn't intervene, all of it! It was all possible because of Archangel's subliminal messaging!" He grasped Donna's shoulders. "Don't you see? This didn't start a year ago! This never stopped – Archangel has been running since the year that wasn't!"

"Doctor!" she screeched, bringing his tirade to an abrupt halt. "That's brilliant." She narrowed her eyes at the grip he had on her mobile. "But don't hurt my phone."

"Right." He coughed guiltily, placing the phone carefully in Donna's hand. "Sorry."

"Right." Donna placed her mobile safely inside her pocket. "Now who is 'he' and what has any of it got to do with Martha seeing her brother?"

Martha. Walking into a trap, one that the Master had no doubt devised.

"We'll look it up online." The Doctor left Donna gaping as he dashed around her to the computer, typing in a hurried 'Leo Jones' into the search engine.

How could the Master have survived? What did he want? And what was he going to do with Martha?

"Doctor." Donna was at his side, brow furrowed as she took in his frantic gestures, his twitchy movements as he waited for the page to load. "Tell me what's wrong."

He glared at the screen, willing the information he wanted to appear, before turning a worried stare back to Donna. "I have more enemies than I suspected left on Earth."

/

Martha wasn't a moron.

She was a loving aunt who was half-convinced that her niece had been poisoned, but she knew better than to walk into any uncertain situation unprepared.

Fortunately, her old flat wasn't far away, and it was a simple matter to grab her gun and place it in the waistband of her jeans before heading off to Leo's, running the entire way.

If there was one good thing the Doctor had done for her it was to make her incredibly good at running. He had also taught her heartache, loss, and distrust, but one day she might be able to run away from those too, just like him.

It was disturbing to realize how she was being reshaped by this man. To see how he continued to sculpt her more and more in his own image, to make her into someone she didn't recognize.

But there were worse things than loosing herself. There were other, more important, sacrifices she wouldn't be willing to make a second time.

Anything to keep her family safe.

When she arrived at the ramshackle building that her brother's family lived in she became nervous instantly. The street lights were dark, no brightness could be seen from windows, no cars on the street. There was no trace of the other young families who shared the building, no laughter from children or fragmented conversation from occupants. It was utterly deserted.

Something was wrong.

She yanked her gun out of her waistband and slowly made her way up the building, scaling the rusty stairs slowly, checking around corners, trying to watch her own back while surveying the situation.

These things always were so much better with two.

But then, she was Martha Jones. At the end of the day, she was left to confront her demons alone.

And then these demons could be rudely unearthed without her consent by meddling, curious, idiotic Time Lords who should have known better…

Martha forced herself to take a large, calming breath. There would be time later to rage at the violation she had undergone. Now, she had a potentially deadly situation to deal with. She would be more than happy to _create_ one later for the energetic, two hearted hamster of a man, but not now. Not with so much at stake.

At last she reached the third floor, and as she neared Leo's flat she saw a bleak glow coming from one of the windows. Knowing better than to linger, to think too long on a situation that was going to be bad no matter how many theoretical plans she made, Martha squared her shoulders, hid her gun hand behind her back, and knocked.

The door opened and directly across from her, sitting happily before the kitchen table while picking at a bowl of cereal, was Anders. With Keisha, terrified, on his lap.

"Hello, Martha," he remarked with a smile, taking another spoonful of his snack.

Martha took the time to scan the area. To the left of Anders and Keisha was the mountain with the black hair, Franklin, with a hand around Shanora's arm and with a boot pinning Leo to the floor. That meant that Danish was the one who had opened the door, still lingering behind wood. She could work with that, if forced.

What about Martha's other assets?

Her brother had clearly lost his temper at one point or another, resulting his position on the ground, the blood dripping from a split lip, and a look in his eyes that could kill, given the right alien technology. Martha would have to see what she could do to get him the tech to make sure he could, next time.

He would be uncontrollable, but Martha could use Leo's anger. Shanora, however, seemed shocked, refusing to take her eyes off her daughter for long, only granting Martha a piercing, pleading, look before turning back to Keisha. Shanora was no one to be trifled with, but with her daughter in harm's way, she would do nothing to upset these men. And with these odds, Martha couldn't afford such caution. Even with Shanora's help there was no guarantee she could get them out of this. Without it, there was no hope.

Anders set his bowl and spoon down on the table behind him. "I might not have bothered with the dramatics," he began apologetically, wiping some spare milk off of his face and giving Keisha a small, gentle, bounce on his leg. She let out a sniffle. "But I do remember Jack Harkness, and your time at Torchwood all but guaranteed that you'd have a firearm, so…" He reached further behind him, pulled out a pistol, and pressed it against Keisha's temple.

As Keisha began crying, Shanora gasped, Leo attempted to kick out from under Franklin's foot, and Anders smiled calmly, Martha just had one question racing through her brain.

How did he remember Jack?  
She gave herself a mental shake. There would be time for questions later. And fear, and panic. All of those emotions and basic reactions would only get in the way now. All Martha could do was ready herself and fix Anders with an icy glare. "Let them go."

"Can't do that. How am I to make sure you behave without a little insurance?" He smirked, gesturing toward Martha. "Put down your gun or I'll kill her." He cocked the firearm held against Keisha's head, still deathly calm.

He, too, knew the value of an unruffled façade.

Leo struggled violently on the floor. "You bastard!" He was rewarded with a kick in the face from Franklin.

Anders's expression didn't change as Leo groaned. "Give the gun to Danish there." Summoned, the brute appeared on her left, holding out an expectant hand.

Seeing that she had little other choice, Martha did as he had asked. Anders seemed ruthless enough to follow through on his threats. After all, he had three hostages in total.

"Excellent." He stood up, placing Keisha on her feet and grasping her hand. In his other, he held his gun. "Now, we're all going to go on a trip, and we're all going to behave very well, or else Keisha here is going to get hurt." He smiled at the sniffling girl and then sent a glance toward Martha. "Do we understand one another?"

Throwing a glance toward her brother and his wife, she gave a curt nod.

"Good."

With that he strode out of the flat, his minions snapping to attention to perform their appropriate duties. Danish popped around the door to seize Martha's arm into a bruising grip as Franklin yanked Leo up off of the ground and got a firm grasp on Shanora's wrist.

"Let's go," Danish muttered, giving Martha a helpful shove out into the night. "Boss is waiting."

She did as he expected, taking another look at Shanora and Leo. Her brother had even more blood smeared across his face than before, and seemed to be favoring his left leg. Not entirely promising. Shanora, on the other hand, seemed to be rowdier than before. Nothing obvious, of course. Just a slight flexing of her captive arm. An assessing glance toward her husband. A single instant when her eyes met Martha's.

Shanora, Martha knew, was a woman of subtlety. Beautiful, quiet and fragile, she was easy to be dismissed by others. Particularly by idiotic men who didn't have the sense to notice her toned muscles, steely glare, and her fiercely protective nature. But Martha did. She knew that her sister-in-law ran a martial arts studio for women, and had ways to incapacitate a man with less effort than some used to bat at flies.

And now, this formidable ally was ready and desperate to fight.

Danish gave her another shove and Martha meekly walked out of the door.

They hadn't lingered long, but enough time had passed for Anders to be stepping off of the staircase onto the street, awkwardly juggling Keisha's wrist and his gun in one hand while digging in the pocket of his jeans, searching for keys.

It was the best chance Martha would have. Granted, being able to partake in this grand acrobatic feat one floor lower would have been nice… But then, this wasn't a nice situation.

Trusting Shanora to keep up, Leo to catch on quickly, and hoping that she wasn't about to kill herself or severely hurt her niece, Martha quite literally sprung into action.

She took half a step in front of Danish, stopped, and kicked him as hard as she could in the kneecap.

She heard a satisfying crunch and scream before she dashed to the railing at the edge of the walkway. She climbed on top of the thin ledge as she heard Franklin's cry add to companion's, and had just enough time to see Anders glance up in confusion.

And then Martha felt the heady sensation of flying.

Followed immediately by a feeling akin to being violently slammed against a brick wall.

It had been, Martha concluded almost instantly, a stupid decision. There was only so much 'aim' possible when flinging oneself off of a building, and while she had done her best to position herself to Anders's left side, where he wasn't holding onto Keisha, that didn't mean she was entirely successful. Half of her managed to reach her target, but the other had hit pavement.

And it had cost her.

She lifted herself off of the ground to feel her head swim unpleasantly, her shoulder scream in protest, and one of her legs shake under her weight.

But none of that mattered.

She looked around her to see Anders face-first on the ground, bleeding from his temple, and clearly dazed. A foot away was Keisha, crying and holding onto her right arm, but seemingly unharmed.

Fantastic. Martha decided that it was only fair to take a half-second to make the world stop spinning.

This was also a bad decision.

She heard a violent scream behind her and whirled around to see a very angry Danish hobbling, full-speed, toward her. Incapable of dodging on her bad leg, Martha braced herself for a second face-to-wall feeling, knowing that she would completely incapacitated after a second impact with the street.

Instead, Leo ran up from behind the lumbering mass and tackled him to the ground. An inelegant, but effective, method.

Racing behind him was Shanora, who sped past Martha to scoop her daughter up in her arms. Glancing up toward the flat, Martha saw Franklin passed out on the stoop, unlikely to get up in the immediate future.

Excellent. Now time to make everything stop spinning.

Or would have been, if it she hadn't noticed the twitching of Anders hand, the one that still held his pistol. The one that was pointed at Shanora.

For the second time in five minutes, Martha threw herself at the man, landing on top of him and feeling the air deflate from his lungs as she yanked the gun out of his grip.

"Run!" Martha screamed over her shoulder. Anders was fighting with her for the gun, and Martha knew that she couldn't win in a contest of strength against a man with biceps the size of her face. "Call my old mobile number!" she yelled. "Get safe!"

The Doctor, no matter what he had done to her, would keep them safe. She certainly wasn't going to be capable of it after this escape attempt.

If she lived through it at all.

Martha and Anders's scuffle continued, but she was paying enough attention to hear Leo angrily yelling, "Dammit, Nora! Go! Keep our daughter safe!" followed by a muffled yelp, undoubtedly from a vicious punch.

Then feet were pounding on the pavement, and Anders became all the more vicious in his struggles, starting to push against Martha's meager weight keeping him pinned to the ground.

Just a few more minutes. Martha only needed to hold on to the gun for another minute or two. That should be enough of a head start – enough to get them away. Just another minute –

But she didn't have another minute.

Suddenly, in one swift motion Anders swung his elbow back into Martha's face, missing her nose by inches, but gifting her with a resonating blow to her forehead.

Stunned, she rolled over onto her side, forcing herself to retain her senses, to take in her surroundings from her position. Franklin was slowly making his way down from the third floor, unsteady on his feet, Danish dashing to join him. And Anders had stood up, staring off into the distance, gun in hand, furious.

"Dammit," he said, almost calm. He turned back to Martha, pulled her up by the lapels of her jacket, standing her up. "Dammit!" he screamed, fury finally coming through.

And with that he punched her soundly in the face.

She woke up several minutes later, blinking from her place on the ground.

"It's of no matter," Anders was saying to the bloodied, but functioning, Danish and Franklin. Franklin was sporting a gory nose, and a bump on his head that was already the size of a golf ball. Danish was little better, with the awkward twist of his knee, a black-eye and gruesome lip. Their leader seemed to be in better shape, although how Martha had no idea. He had blood streaming from his temple and a scratch along his forehead, but otherwise looked untouched.

She just hoped that she had caused some unseen damage when she cleverly fell on him. Twice.

Martha gave herself a light shake and then instantly regretted the action. She did a quick assessment of her injuries, noting the dizziness, the dislocated shoulder, the giant bruise her body had become, the blood running down her cheek. Under her fingernails.

Normally, she would have laughed at the trio's foolishness at leaving her unguarded. Would have found some way to get away, to run. To take advantage of their carelessness.

But Martha was in no shape for running. She knew it, and so did they.

Not that it was important. They had gotten away. She had kept her family safe. Anything could happen to her now. It didn't matter. Let the universe implode, so long as they were together and happy and alive until the very end of it.

"An inconvenience, nothing more." Anders continued. "As our insurance has gone and run off, we simply have no choice but to make clear that we have other ways of assuring cooperation. Clearly, mere threats aren't enough." Sensing Martha's eyes on him, Anders turned toward her, sending her a cruel smile. "What a shame."

Danish and Franklin exchanged a nervous glance. "Anders-" Franklin began.

"Shut up!" Anders yelled, showing another crack in his impenetrable act of tranquility. "A lesson needs to be learned here. And I know just how to teach it."

Martha had ruffled his feathers. Made him loose focus. React.

The thought satisfied her immensely.

Let him teach his lesson. If he could have killed her, he would have done it already. What other power did he have over her now?

She remained smug until Anders looked away from her and gestured for his goons to move, revealing Leo, unconscious against a lamp post behind them.

"Yes," Anders remarked, sending her another chilling grin. "This will do nicely."

/

An hour after they had begun their frantic internet search, Donna and the Doctor were wandering aimlessly through the streets, trying to find an unknown flat with nothing to guide them but a list of sixteen address in which a 'Leo Jones' was listed as a resident.

And it was driving the Doctor mad.

Oh, Donna knew that he often put on an air of high-energy antics to distract enemies, irritate fellow travelers, and make a general fool of himself, but this was different.

This was fear. And worry. And something else, too.

If she didn't know better, Donna would have thought it was excitement.

Which wasn't to say the Doctor didn't seem terrified, because he did. Donna had no doubt that if he could, the Doctor would will Martha to appear before him, using nothing but the power of his desire, shame, and his, however terribly expressed, affection.

But there was a bit too much spring in his step to be accounted for entirely by anxiety. A bit too much energy expended in those extra hops for him to be entirely consumed with dread.

Not that she knew why he would be consumed dread. Or anxious glee. The Doctor was, after all, an insensitive dolt and couldn't be expected to do something as simple as communicating effectively when he was busy being simultaneously panicked and happy whilst attempting to find a mysterious flat in London.

Donna was not pleased. Especially since she had been struggling to understand the same nonsense for the past thirty minutes.

"So there's some kinky business involving your master and phones to 'control' Martha?" Donna had to admit it was a bit more risqué than she would have thought the Doctor fond of, but still…

The Doctor spared her an exasperated glance. "I have mentioned _the_ Master before, you know."

"Yes, but I always thought it was code for some sort of alien." Who went around insisting people call him 'the master'? Seriously?

"It is," the Doctor replied, glancing down at the list of addresses once more. "He's another Time Lord. The only other Time Lord, actually."

Ah-ha. Donna might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but she could catch on to things quick enough, given the proper insight. "The _other_ last of the Time Lords is responsible for setting up a trap for Martha?"

The Doctor gave a distracted nod.

"And probably the past torturous year?"

"Yes."

"So not a good Time Lord, then?"

"Not so much, no."

There was a pain in his pause, a certain desperation in his quick stride.

Terrible, when the one person to share your past was also among your greatest of enemies.

"But wait," Donna quickened her stride, trying to keep up with the skinny twig's overly long legs. "The Master died, didn't he? That's how the year that wasn't never happened, right? His plan got mucked up by you and Martha, and then he died."

"That's what I thought," the Doctor muttered, still keeping up his rapid pace and glancing at the list with growing irritation. "But he must have found a loophole. A way to regenerate well after he died. That's the only thing that makes sense, the only way it could be possible." He sent Donna a desperate look. "But it _is_ possible, Donna."

The hope and fear contained in that proclamation would have been enough to leave anyone in an emotional knot. One of the Doctor's dearest companions was in dire peril due to the actions of the only other living member of his species in the whole of creation. And the Doctor, emotional child that he was, clearly had no idea how to cope with the situation.

Not that Donna was worried for Martha's sake. She was certain the Doctor would find a way to get his companion back, because he would allow for nothing else. But at what cost? What would the Doctor be forced to give up in order to save his friend?

"Useless is what you are!" he yelled at the list of addresses before stopping abruptly and throwing it to the ground. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and started fiddling with the controls. "I'm going to triangulate her location based upon the remaining energy from the implanted dreams, which should create a trail leading to her."

Donna blinked at him. "That all sounded very precise, but you're doing that hair pulling thing, which means you're making things up again."

He gave his hair another tug and looked hopefully at the screwdriver. "It should work."

"Um hm."

"It should." He frowned, pausing in his anxious actions. "Although it shouldn't make my chest buzz." He looked at the sonic device with awe. "Always insist on surprising me, don't you?"

"It's your mobile!" Donna raced toward him, pulling open his jacket and shoving the phone at him. "With the amount of time you spend in the twenty-first century, it really wouldn't hurt to look up how to work these things!"

The Doctor snapped open the mobile. "Martha, don't say anything, everything's tapped. Get somewhere safe and we'll find you!"

He raised the phone triumphantly in front of Donna. "Now this," he said with a smile, "this we can trace."

"But the Master can trace it too, can't he? With Archangel?"

"Yes ma'am."

Donna let out a sigh. "We're going to have to run again, aren't we?"

The Doctor smiled and grasped her hand. "Aren't we always?"

In fifteen minutes they had managed to break down several fences, invade various homes, and ultimately end up across town far more efficiently than should have been possible, given property laws and the ilk.

But that was the Doctor, Donna supposed. He could at turns defend justice, order and the status quo, and then break every law, rule, and regulation if it meant getting to those who needed him.

Ultimately they ended up in a deserted street, the sight of a silhouette of a small woman greeting them from across the way as they staggered out of some bushes.

The Doctor all but skipped his way down the road. "Martha?"

But then the woman turned around, her skinned darkened, her features became more delicate, and a small girl was crying in her arms.

And like he had been deflated, the Doctor sagged into himself.

But much opposite to the Doctor's suddenly pessimistic look, the young woman seemed to lighten at the sight of him. "Are you the Doctor?"

"Yes," he said, taking a breath and then perking up considerably. "And forgive the rudeness, but who are you, exactly?"

"Shanora, Shanora Jones." She awkwardly juggled the sobbing girl in her arms and offered the Doctor a hand to shake.

"Leo's wife," the Doctor recalled, relief touching his features. He looked down to the child. "And this must be Keisha."

Donna neatly stepped in, smiling and waving at the, clearly terrified, little thing. "Aren't you just lovely?" she told the girl with an exaggerated cheerfulness. Donna understood children, understood that when afraid, they didn't want to be confronted with their anxious mothers and overactive, equally worried, aliens. They just wanted someone to make it all better.

Donna could be great at that, even if only for a few moments.

She held out her arms and gestured toward Shanora. "May I?"

"Yes, yes please." With that the woman gently passed over her daughter and focused her attention on the man she had been looking for. "Doctor, I've only heard a bit about you, and I know we've never met. But-" She paused, took a deep breath. Gathered herself. "They've got Leo. And Martha. And they were going to hurt Keisha if I didn't get away-"

Donna cooed over Keisha as the Doctor rested his hands on the woman's shoulders, willing her to relax even as he looked at her with a concentrated intensity.

"Tell me what happened."

/

Martha had no idea where she was.

She had no idea how long it had been since she had been hauled off of the pavement and into an unmarked van, no notion as to what these men wanted from her, and no clue as to how long her brother would be able to survive after the beating that had been given to him.

She wasn't doing well enough herself to judge his condition. Her eyes kept loosing focus, and it was dark out, and the only thing she could really make out was his faint breathing and the drops of blood that kept coming from the split in his lip. Or maybe it was the blood coming from his nose? Or maybe it was coming up with all of the coughing he was doing. Maybe Franklin and Danish had broken a rib or two. Maybe they had punctured a lung. Maybe he had internal damage. Maybe –

Martha had no idea how her brother was doing.

But she tried to take heart when she heard Leo's groan as he was tossed into a corner of the non-descript office room, in an equally unremarkable building she had caught only a fleeting glimpse of as she was hauled out of the van and into a dark corridor.

"Keep him here," Anders ordered, tightening his hold on Martha's arm and glaring at his men. "I'm going to take her to the boss." He gestured toward a door at the far end of the room. "Stay put, you understand? Unless Rossi or myself comes out of those doors and asks for you or the boy, you're not to move." His men nodded dully and grunted a bit as Martha was roughly pulled out of the room by Anders, trying desperately to create some sort of mental catalogue, to conceive of some sort of exit strategy. Some way to save Leo, herself. Some way to put her life back to what it was, before the monsters and aliens and guns and death.

But before she could sense any of that out, she was being thrown to her knees before an impressive leather chair, with a familiar smug face staring down at her from it, smoking a cigar.

Behind her, Anders straightened. "Ambassador Rossi, I've brought you Martha Jones."

"Excellent," the man remarked, taking another tuft from his smoke. He looked odd, she thought. Anders and Martha were both dressed in simple street gear, effective for running and fighting. But Rossi was in a robe, pajama bottoms peeking out from under the satin fabric. And now that Martha thought about it, the room was odd as well. There was a lush carpet under Martha's knees, a fire burning in some corner, rich paintings on the walls. Moments ago Martha had been shoved through a droll office building. Where was she now?

Rossi glanced over his shoulder. "Did you hear that, love?" A feminine, red, shape suddenly emerged, sashaying forward, languidly resting an arm on the back of the Ambassador's chair. "We've captured one of your pets, just like you wanted."

And as Rossi smirked at Martha, behind him Lucy Saxon smiled.

"Yes, Rodolfo darling," she said, leaning forward and kissing him on the temple. Then she pulled out a handgun, took a step back, and shot him in the head. "We did."


	12. Chapter 12

**Title**: Wasteland (11/14)  
**Characters**: Ten, Martha, Donna  
**Word Count**: 5,929  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. *sniff*  
**Spoilers**: Up to "Planet of the Ood." (Sort of.)  
**Summary**: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).  
**Author's Notes**: Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone on FF dot net for their encouraging reviews and messages, I finished this chapter up ASAP. Sorry, not done for Christmas, but done for the new year! Different kind of chapter, so let me know what you think. No beta and not British, so any concrit would be great. Thanks and enjoy!

/

_**The Year That Never Was**___

May

Lucy watches the world burn and smiles.

She shouldn't, and she knows that. A tenth of the human race is being destroyed down there, after all. People are dying by the thousands.

But all she can do is extend her lips into an overjoyed grin.

Bellow there is nothing but destruction and death. But Lucy knows that's not what this is. It's a triumph. Something her husband had been working toward for well over a year. Something she had helped him accomplish.

She, Lucy Cole – the stupid girl who was an embarrassment to her family and a fool to everyone else – had helped to create all of this.

The Toclafane even call her Mother.

And it is all because of Harry. Harry, who had told her she was special when the world wanted to do away with her. Who loved her when everyone else simply used her for her family connections and money. Who wanted her, in spite of everything, and who allowed her to be a part of all of _this_.

Harry takes the Doctor and backs away from the window, so Lucy walks forward to look properly at what she has helped to make. She steps up as close as she can to the smooth surface, leans her forehead against the glass, and looks down at the fire bellow.

It isn't what she had thought to do, it's true. She had assumed her future would be spent tucked in some powerful man's bedroom, bored and untouched and ignored.

And no, the scene bellow isn't necessarily pretty. Isn't something to brag about during her parent's wine parties, or to boast about at the latest trendy lounge.

But she certainly isn't bored. And she is most definitely touched. And Harry sees her in a way no one else ever has. He doesn't see her for what she is, but for everything she could be. When they met, he had seen her as his wife, his lover, his accomplice.

His faithful companion.

She pulls away from the window as Harry appears, a warm presence at her back, a tug at her elbow. A searing kiss on her still-smiling lips.

/

At first, all Joel can feel is terror.

He is on a flying ship, the president of the United States has been shot, and he is half convinced that he just saw a man age a hundred years in thirty seconds while a woman disappeared in a flash of light.

None of these things are normal fare for the twenty-four year-old rookie journalist.

Down bellow, he knows the Earth is on fire. He can almost hear the people dying.

Joel doesn't let the panic take control for long. His first assignment had been to work with a troop of new recruits through boot camp and their first few months in Afghanistan. After enough bombs go off around you, you learn quickly enough that panicking, terror, hope… All of those emotions will get you killed.

So instead, Joel runs into the nearest supply closet, finds a non-descript, grunt-man uniform, and puts it on. He ditches his pen, paper, mobile and suit as soon as possible, kicking them into a dust bin and hoping that no one discovers them. He suspects that journalists will not be welcome on the _Valiant_ for long.

For the first week, he walks around in a barely-concealed state of fear. He doesn't know what has happened to his family or friends, doesn't dare think too heavily on what the mad fellow in charge is up to, and tries to blend in as seamlessly as possible.

It isn't nearly as difficult as it should be.

The commander of the small troop of military men merely scowls at Joel when he shows up in the barracks without a rifle or proper shoes, and orders him to scrub the mess and bathrooms before supplying him with the finishing touches to his disguise, a bunk to sleep in, and food to eat.

Initially, Joel tries to be inconspicuous, something that takes too much effort and makes him anxious. So the second week, he tries to look at it as another assignment. Like with the recruits, only this time he is undercover. Investigating the inner workings of the fortress that helped a mad man take over the world.

It helps. The thought of having a mission – something to work toward in a very broken world – calms him. He still doesn't dare try to contact anyone on the earth bellow. He doesn't even try to talk to people on the ship, too nervous that someone might remember him from the news conference if allowed a good look at him. But he has a reason to be on the ship, even if it is a manufactured one. Emotions are easy to control when Joel had a firm sense of purpose.

Or they are until the third week, anyway.

Then Joel meets Sam.

/

_July_

It's past noon when Harry barges into their bedroom, jumping on the bed and jarring her awake.

"Wife! How are you today? Well, I hope? Of course you are!"

As she groggily sits up, Lucy wonders if she can be well today, for Harry's sake.

"I've a surprise for you this morning!"

She stretches and smiles at him. Loves him with a look. "A surprise?"

"Yes!" He leaps off the bed, grabbing her hand and tugging her out as well, pulling her out of their room and into the hallways of the _Valiant_ in her nightie. "I'm going to take you back to Utopia in my Paradox Machine!"

The smile vanishes from Lucy's face. "No, Harry, I don't want to." She digs her heels into the smooth floor, tries to back up and return to the bedroom. "I hate it there. It's so dark, and cold. And now that all the people are gone it's worse than ever. Please, don't take me back."

She hates it, now, when the Toclafane call her Mother.

He smiles at her in that indulgent, frightening way. The one Lucy has learned to be wary of. "Don't call me Harry." He frowns at her. "You know how that irritates me."

He starts pulling her forward again, but not down the corridor where the Paradox Machine is kept, so Lucy lets herself be guided. She still trusts Harry to lead her anywhere, so long as it isn't to Utopia.

"And what are you on about? Not liking it! It's lovely! It's your future, darling. What the human race becomes! What it has to look forward to! You need to bare witness for the rest of your kind, need to process it properly, for their sake."

"Why can't they go and see it for themselves?" she asks, causing him to stop and look back at her. "I don't like that place. It's empty."

"Oh, but that's what I love best about it! Don't you see, Lucy?" He brings a gentle hand to caress her face, and she leans into his touch. "That's what the human race is – what it has always been heading towards. Utter vacancy. That's why you need to see it! So you can be different, special. So you can embrace what you really are and become better for it!"

"No. I won't."

He takes away his hand and frowns again.

"You will." He turns abruptly, pulling her down the hallway once more, fierce. "I can make you." He smiles manically at her from over his shoulder. "I can make you want to."

Lucy shakes her head. "You can't."

Not there. She will go anywhere, everywhere, with Harry. She just doesn't want to go back there.

"But I can, darling! Come, look!" With that they reach a set of doors, and he flings them open to reveal the _Valliant_'s command deck.

He speeds past the Doctor's small tent and hauls her up the steps at the front of the room, pointing to the controls waiting there. "This is one of the controlling stations for Archangel. I have dozens scattered about the United Kingdom down bellow. It's how I got all of your charming countrymen to elect me." He takes a moment to furrow his brow thoughtfully. "Don't know why the Earth governments haven't come up with it sooner."

Lucy smiles.

"For mass messaging it's a bit complex, far too much for you to understand. But with enough tweaking and working, I can make the satellites above transmit a subliminal command that you all, like lemmings, follow." He rolls his eyes. "Rather disappointing, really." Another shrug. "But for an individual consciousness it's a great deal simpler. I think even you can understand how it's done."

Lucy stops smiling.

"See, all I need is an imprint of your psyche. One signature, one trace, and then I can rearrange the satellites to focus all of their attentions on a single person." He grins, wraps on arm over her shoulders. "All I need is a strand of hair." He tugs on her hair, and all Lucy feels is a sharp pain and the weight of his arm leave her. "It doesn't always work, of course. Some have better mental barriers than others, and time traveling doesn't help matters."

Lucy watches as he places the strand of her hair on a particular section of the machine, pays attention to the toggles he touches and how he adjusts them.

He turns to look at her affectionately, and Lucy feels a moment of overwhelming pride.

"But that shouldn't be a problem with you, dear. And do you know why?"

She smiles at him. "Because I'm special, Harry."

He frowns at her, stops his movements. "How are you special, dearest?"

And then she realizes what he wants her to say.

"I'm empty."

"That's right, darling." He bends down and kisses her for so long that she gets dizzy for lack of breath. "You are."

When they return, Archangel's affects wear off, and harry smiles as Lucy starts to softly cry.

/

_September_

Four months after the world ends, Joel has been promoted, has a boyfriend, and has gained twenty pounds worth of muscle.

He's not necessarily proud of it, but it's obvious that the end of the world has worked out well for him.

He's still a bit confused as to why he got promoted, and how. All he knows is that he is now a corporal, with the benefit of his own room and the promise of his own command, if they can manage to bring up more men from the earth's surface.

Joel decides it's best not to question the whys of his burgeoning career, and instead focuses all of his attentions on Sam.

Although he is a bit surprised to realize how much he enjoys having sex with another man, Joel can't pretend to be shocked at how quickly and easily he accepts this new layer of his sexuality. In any other set of circumstances, he might have happily gone throughout his life without having a relationship like the one he now has with Sam. But now that he does, he knows he is happier here, at the end of the world, than he ever could have been living that other life.

Sam is older, thirty-five, and he's a sergeant in another division on the Valiant. He doesn't talk much, but his eyes are deep and sad, and when Joel touches him, it feels like he's on fire. And although it's only been a few months, Joel has to admit that they got themselves into a bit of a routine. Sam will get that wandering, depressed look, Joel will console him, and Sam will reciprocate.

It might be odd, but Joel likes Sam's sadness best. It's something that Joel won't allow himself to feel, but that he can ease in his lover. It's not quite like grieving, but it's cathartic all the same.

Meanwhile, Joel has been doing his best to keep up with the other men. Taking his 'mission' to heart, he decides that to improve his cover he needs to build muscle, brush up on his military knowledge, and learn to fire a gun.

Progress is slow, but he doesn't mind. He always has been meticulous when it comes to his assignments.

/

_November_

The first time he hits her, it actually is an accident.

Lucy knows because when it happens he seems shocked, concerned, and even afraid. And for a while she's almost happy that it happened, because it makes it easier to remember that he loves her.

But after that first time, the alarm and caring go away. Instead they're replaced by the same glib, agitated humor that he's started to approach everything with.

She had hoped, though, that he'd never use it with her.

Lucy thought she was special.

After a few weeks, she realizes that's why he keeps doing it. Because each time, he seems a little less shocked with himself. A little less concerned for her. A little less afraid of what he has done.

Each time he hits her, Lucy feels another bit of Harry slipping away.

Or maybe the Master just likes the way she bruises.

/

_December_

Around Christmas, Joel is assigned to feed Jack Harkness.

The Master had decided to give the Jones family the holiday off – mostly to mock them rather than due to any sense of charity – and since Joel hadn't been quick enough to invent some excuse, he's saddled with the task of dealing with the notoriously difficult man.

He drags Sam up to the isolated deck where Harkness is kept, kisses him fiercely, and then sends him away again, pleased that he has been able to wrap such a strong man around his finger.

Thus satisfied, he begins to feed Harkness.

"He doesn't love you."

Joel looks up from the colorless porridge to see his prisoner smirking.

"The man you were with." Harkness shrugs as eloquently as possible from his suspended position. "He doesn't. Sorry."

Joel glares and shoves a spoon of the mush into the man's mouth. "Did I speak to you?"

Harkness barely takes enough time to swallow. "Nice with the stern, commanding voice. It'll be more impressive once you have actual power to back up that tone, but it's a start."

"I have enough _actual_ power over you." To prove his point, Joel sets aside the food and stares at the rouge pointedly.

It may be petty, and under different circumstances it might worry Joel how easily he can lord his power over a starving man whose died at least a thousand times over the past seven months.

But Joel's undercover, so he tries not to let it bother him.

And to be fair, it doesn't seem to impress Harkness in any event. "Of course you do, for now. But you don't have any power over him." He gestures toward the hallway, where Joel's beaux had just departed. "Sam's his name, yes? And you're Joel, right?"

Joel leans forward, ignoring the questions and focusing on his prisoner's bold words. "What do you mean I have no power over him?"

"Like I said." Another artful shrug. "He doesn't love you, and you clearly love him."

Joel does his best to hide his internal panic with a cocky grin. "Do I?"

The man Joel is pretending to be could never sentimental enough to love anyone else, and certainly not another bloke.

"Oh, yes." For the first time, his tone isn't goading or hinting at mockery.

If Joel didn't know any better, Harkness may actually be trying to have a conversation with him.

"I know the stiff military way of expressing these kinds of things. Have done it myself on plenty of occasions. It's all in the eyes." Harkness sends him a genuine smile. "Yours become softer when he's in the room."

Joel squares his shoulders and scowls, just to prove how harsh he really is. "People have called me many things, Mr. Harkness, but never soft."

He laughs. "Well, forgive me for breaking the precedent. But you do gentle, with him around. It's nice to see. Not everyone in your position, in your century, can do that."

Joel frowns. "My century?"

"I'm a time traveler, didn't you know? Well, I was." A reminiscing look crosses his features. "Been to just about everywhere that ever was. Everywhere that ever will be. It's a big universe we're living in, and time is just one tiny aspect of it that I've been about." He focuses his attention back on Joel. "I'm originally from the fifty-first century. Different place. Men are better at being soft, then."

"Some men they must be." He tries to inject as much scorn as possible into his tone.

Harkness ignores it. "Oh, the best. Don't you go thinking that a man can't be strong and gentle. It's commanding stuff, when done in the right measure."

"Yes, because you've such an air of command about you now."

"Wait and see, kiddo. I may be in chains now, but I won't be forever. And when I get out, you'll see right quick how easy it is for a man like me to control brutes of this sort with no more than a firearm and true character." He ponders for a moment. "Could do it now, if not for these blasted chains. They really do nothing to flatter my figure, try though I might."

"So with no chains and a gun you think you could take control of the station?" Joel asks, not attempting to disguise his disbelief.

"Yes. And I already have a gun. Just no way to get at it, unfortunately." He sighs in irritation.

Joel blinks at him. "You don't have a gun on you."

"Sure I do."

"We searched you."

"Not everywhere." Harkness gives him a scandalous wink.

And then Joel decides that, if circumstances were different, he would get along quite well with Mr. Harkness.

"Me and my people? We always have weapons on us." He nods at Joel pointedly. "So would you, and everyone else on this station, if it wasn't run by idiots."

Joel gives up the play-acting and laughs. "I think I'm starting to see what you mean about that commanding personality."

He can enjoy himself around Harkness, surely. He's a prisoner after all, and no more likely to escape his predicament than Joel is. If he can be his true self around Sam, he certainly has nothing to lose by doing the same around this doomed immortal with no hope of salvation.

Harkness grins. "Knew you'd come around, Joel."

"Not so fast, there. I'm not joining your rebel alliance or anything."

"Maybe not." He considers his captor with more seriousness than Joel had intended to evoke from his joking comment. "Like I said, you're capable of tenderness. That says a great deal about you, in a time like this. Means you might not be quite as changeable as everyone else." He gives a knowing nod. "It's because you're young still. They haven't wormed their way into the heart of you, yet."

"Or Sam," Joel says with a touch of defensiveness.

"No." He sighs. "Misery has done that for him. I've loved that way before, too." He shakes his head sadly, as if he truly believes what he's saying. "There's no joy in him, when he's with you. There's only sorrow. Terrible, broken, sad. He's not sharing his love with you, mate. He's sharing his anguish."

Then Jack Harkness looks at Joel with such compassion that he can almost feel the weight of it wrap around his shoulders. "That's the problem with tenderness. It can be so easily misplaced."

And in that moment Joel forgets that he's pretending to be a solider and that his life depends on the charade, that the Earth is slowly being destroyed bellow him, and that he's talking to an immortal time-traveler from the future.

In that instant, instead Joel allows himself to feel fear for his very human heart.

Unnerved, Joel immediately returns to his mission, his act.

Anything to help him forget how fragile he feels under his flimsy military mask.

"You done?" he asks his prisoner, yanking the porridge away and standing up before Harkness has the opportunity to answer.

"Suppose so," the prisoner snorts. "Will I see you again?"

Joel shakes his head, already heading for the hallway. "I doubt it. Ms. Jones will be back tomorrow."

"Shame. So nice, to have a proper chat with someone new." Another sigh. "Goodbye, Joel. Be careful."

Joel pauses in his retreat, throws a glance back to Harkness. "You're wrong." He locks eyes with the man. "About Sam."

"No, kiddo." He maintains Joel's stare. "I'm not."

The compassion threatens to crush him again, so Joel does what no self-respecting soldier ever does.

He runs away.

/

_February_

One day, he takes her to a room in the _Valiant_ she's never seen before. It has a floor made of clear plastic and walls made of mirrors.

She doesn't say it, but the room terrifies her.

"It's good, isn't it? Isn't it good?"

Harry gestures to the torched landscape of the Earth and looks eagerly back at Lucy, all but hopping in place.

"It looks sad." Because the Earth looks just the way Lucy feels. Burnt. Broken. Though she thinks Harry wouldn't understand what she meant if she told him that.

He frowns in that comical way he has, the one that used to make her giggle. "Sad? What do you mean sad?" He throws open his arms to the scene beneath them, jostling her in the process but not seeming to notice. "It's beautiful! Lovely! I could dance! Come on, let's dance!" He grabs her by the wrist and spins her around, making the picture of the Earth bellow them blur.

"Harry, don't."

His grip on her wrist tightens and he abruptly brings them to a stop. "Why, sweet, do you keep calling me Harry?" He's not yelling, but he's bringing his face closer and closer to hers, and his eyes look angrier than she's ever seen them. "That's not my name, is it?" He gives her wrist a painful twist. "Is it?"

"No."

"What is my name?"

"The Master."

"Good girl." And then he's smiling again, but in that false way that Lucy has learned to recognize. "Come along. We have a universe to destroy." He holds her hand and bounces around the room, laughing and grinning at her the entire time, truly looking like the demented Master of an entire world.

But didn't he see? The important world, the one he had created and shared with her, had already been destroyed. He had burnt and broken it, and now she really was empty.

/

_March_

Joel is told to go down onto the Earth's surface and hunt down rebel fighters in Japan.

While he's down there, he kills a man and comes up with a plan to set Tokyo on fire.

He gets slaps on the back from his comrades and another promotion from his superiors, but when he gets back to the _Valiant_ he gets sick in the nearest bathroom, disgusted with himself.

That night after hours of mind-altering sex, Sam congratulates him on his first kill and the extra stripe on his uniform.

And then Joel doesn't know what to feel.

/

_May_

When the universe lives, Lucy knows that he must die, so he won't break and burn it all over again.

So she shoots the Master and longs for Harry with all of her empty, broken heart.

/

_**The Year That Was**___

July

Joel straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell of the small cottage.

A middle-aged woman with blond hair and a nice smile answered the door. "Can I help you?"

"Hello. I'm looking for a Sam Worthington? I'm doing a piece on retired military officials and would love to ask him some questions."

The woman sent him suspicious glance and motioned to shut the door.

"I will, of course, be offering considerable compensation for his time, and media coverage."

The woman brightened a bit at that, reopening the door and sending him a cautious smile. "Well, he didn't retire, truth be told. He resigned." She leaned forward, sending Joel a commiserating grin. "Between you and me? The best decision he's ever made for this family. Let me get him for you." She turned around, yelling into the interior of the home. "Sam, honey? There's someone at the door for you."

"Tell them to bugger off!"

"It's the press, Sam!"

A indistinct 'Bleh!' sound was the only response.

"He says he might be able to offer us compensation!"

And then Joel saw the man he hadn't been able to stop thinking about in the months since the world had been reborn.

Sam appeared after running around a corner with a young boy swinging in his arms, wearing a cardboard box with a hole on his head and making ridiculous zooming noises.

Joy was radiating from him, a happiness and ease that Joel had never seen before.

Joel could barely recognize him.

"We're battling intergalactic space monkeys in here!" Sam informed the woman, as he tossed the boy in the air, making the child giggle. "Nothing's more important than ridding the universe of this scourge!"

The woman at the door laughed, taking her son from Sam and gesturing toward the door. "I'll tackle space monkey duty, you answer the young man's questions."

Sam sighed in defeat. "Yes, ma'am." He reluctantly took off his box helmet.

"Good husband." She leaned forward to give him a peck on the cheek, but Sam turned his head at the last moment, catching her mouth in a passionate, if awkward and child-laden, kiss.

And then Joel knew, even if he didn't want to admit it, that he never should have come.

Sam walked to the front door, a hint of his smile playing around his lips as he raised his face to greet his guest. "Can I help y-?"

At the look of shock and terror on his former lover's face, Joel felt something inside him snap.

"Joel."

There was no warmth in that tone, no joy or glee.

There was only panic.

Joel shuffled his feet a bit. "Hi."

Sam stepped outside, closing the door to his house behind him, blocking his family from view. "What are you doing here?"

Joel tried to offer a charming smile. "Looking for you."

Sam stiffened, lowered his voice, stared Joel down. "I love my wife, Joel."

The younger man almost recoiled from the hostility being sent his way.

He hadn't known what to expect when he had gathered up the courage to come here after two months of indecision, anxiety and horrible longing. So when he had finally summoned the gumption to track down the man who had been his anchor during Armageddon, Joel had been determined not to have any plans or expectations, and certainly not to have anything as foolish as hopes.

But that all that purposeful non-preparation meant that he hadn't been ready for rejection, either.

He adjusted his feet awkwardly, forcing himself not to instantly become defensive or apologetic, like he wanted to be.

Then he ordered himself not to be angry, or become cruel, like he had been forced to learn how to do in a in a year that had never happened.

It was terrifying, how often Joel had to remind himself that he wasn't undercover anymore. That he had never been a solider, that he didn't need to dull his compassion, that there was no one to hide from and no one to fight.

Because even thought it had only been a few months, Joel hadn't been able to merge back into the life he had once lived with such satisfaction. He had remade himself to survive in a world gone mad, and now he didn't know how to go back when it became sane again. How could he exist without the year that had reshaped him in every possible way? How could he forget everything he had done, everything he had accomplished, the power he had wielded? How could he carry the weight of a world that never existed? How could he forget everything that had been erased?

Especially the love.

"Of course you do." Joel reassured Sam. "And I wouldn't want to destroy your family, or ask you to leave them." He looked hopefully at his one-time lover. "I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to leave me, either."

Barely giving him enough time to finish, Sam gave an emphatic shake of his head. "No."

Joel recoiled as if punched in the gut.

"I'm sorry, but I love my wife and son." He gestured toward Joel. "Us, what we did… that never happened. If the world hadn't been the way it was, if my family had still been alive…" Sam sighed and gave a small glance back into his home before frowning at Joel. "Do you understand?"

Joel took a backward step away from the house. "Yes."

And he did understand.

He understood that he could never be soft again.

/

_January_

They put Lucy in an asylum. They thought she was crazy.

She didn't know how to tell them that she'd not gone mad, but sane again.

She had killed the man she loved. Used to love. Still loved.

And she had done it all for them.

These stupid, cruel, unforgiving people who had never seen her before she had helped to destroy them and couldn't see her now. These people who didn't realize how tiny they were, how doomed they would all become, given enough time.

After witnessing the end of the universe, the end of human life, Lucy knew the truth about this sad race. She knew how meaningless and empty they all would become, in time. Like her.

She had thought, when she pulled the trigger, that she was saving them all. Preventing the Master from coming back, conquering them all again. She had even thought she was saving herself, with the Doctor there in his shiny lights and grand promises.

But she should have known by then that Time Lords lie.

Who was Lucy now? Who could she possibly be, without him? When broken and empty, all a person wants is completion. Lucy wanted her other half, her companion. Harry, the man who had made her happy, had made her special. Because Harry had been a man who could love her, who could show her the universe just by holding her in his arms.

A man who had died long before she had shot him.

She just hadn't realized that when she killed him, she had also killed who she had been when she was with him. Now, she knew her mistake. Knew the truth of her nature, the truth about everyone. About humans, about Time Lords, about herself, and most of all, about Harry.

But the truth didn't help anyone, least of all her. She was empty, and she knew that she had killed off the only chance she had at being full again.

And so she let the months go by. Thinking more about how hallow she was. How hopelessly broken. How terribly lonely. It wasn't life, not really, but it was all she had, and so she kept at it, her hatred for humanity growing as quickly as her regret for killing the only person who had ever made something of her.

Then, one day, she received a visitor.

"How are you today, Lucy?"

They had taken her to a plain room and left her there with a table, two chairs and a man. She didn't know why. They might have told her, but she had long since stopped listening to whatever they said to her.

"Mrs. Saxon?"

She didn't speak anymore. Didn't he know? Hadn't someone informed him that she was empty? That empty people have no voices because they have nothing to say?

The man got up, walked to a corner of the room and disconnected the small camera that had been filming them. He then sat back down and stared at her until she was forced to acknowledge him.

When she looked into his hard eyes, she was reminded of the Master.

"Mrs. Saxon, my name is Joel Anders. I want to bring your husband back."

/

_March_

It had taken months for Anders to get access to Lucy Saxon. It was only after publishing a series of articles about the former Prime Minister that his begging for an interview with the woman was heeded, and only then because the hospital thought that they might get some good donors with the press.

It had taken time, but really it had all been quite simple. Everyone, he realized, wanted something, and because of that everyone could be exploited. Most didn't have the courage to take what they wanted on their own, and so they were looking for any reason to let someone else to do it for them. Anders found he was good at this. All it took was the ability to crush any and everyone in his way.

At first, Mrs. Saxon hadn't been as helpful as he had hoped. For the first two weeks she didn't say anything at all, merely staring at him blankly as he told her about his plans to bring the other world back, and with it the Master. He explained that in order to do as he hoped, he needed information about time travel and mind control, information he knew she had and that would get her husband back.

He was about to give up when she finally spoke. "We need Archangel. And we need the Paradox Machine."

Offices for Archangel satellites were still open throughout the UK, and Mrs. Saxon claimed that these offices contained control decks which could run the subliminal mind control wave links that had allowed her husband to become Prime Minister.

Anders researched the company in the wake of the death of Harold Saxon and the incarceration of his wife for his murder. Apparently, the company was fair game on the open market, although a wealthy Italian diplomat by the name of Rodolfo Rossi had been looking into buying the largest share, and was frequently traveling between Italy and the UK to discuss business with the remaining stock holders.

And so Anders formed a plan. He immediately quit his job at the newspaper and got hired as one of Rossi's personal security guards, shrugging off his old life as easily as others shrugged off ill-fitting clothes.

Because Anders knew that he wasn't the same as he had been a year ago. That he wasn't Joel, the bright journalism student with compassion and aims to better the world. That life no longer fit him. Now, all he wanted, all he needed, was to see the earth burn again. He knew how to navigate that life. Knew how to survive it. In that world, he was without vulnerabilities. In that world, no one could hurt him.

Lucy Saxon proved be a simple but valuable partner in his quest to bring about the end of the times a second time. While he was quickly rising in the ranks in Rossi's security team, she was getting out of the asylum. She made rapid and impressive progress, forced her lawyers to rush her court case, sold herself as a scared woman trying to protect her country.

Lucy wasn't bright, and Anders found himself struggling to remain patient with the half-mad woman as he explained what he needed from her. She never seemed to be entirely focused, always seemed to be off in some corner of her limited mind. It was maddening, and Anders would have been rougher with her if he thought she could stand it without descending completely into insanity. Persistence paid off, however, and Lucy, given enough coaxing, was very good at following the directives of others who could help her reach her goals. Freedom, and Harry.

Within four months, Anders had bribed or disposed of everyone within Rossi's security who wasn't loyal to him, making him head of the division. Meanwhile, Lucy was out of the asylum and ready to begin her next task in the execution of the plan.

She was going to seduce Rodolfo Rossi.

/

_April_

Lucy didn't mind becoming Rodolfo's lover. She knew it would upset Harry when he came back, but she would just explain that it was all necessary to get him back. That it proved how much she loved him.

It took Lucy a week to make Rodolfo take her to bed, and another week to convince him to buy Archangel stay in England with her.

The satisfied nod Anders sent her after was almost enough to make her feel special again.

She and Anders had gone into one of the Archangel offices soon after, and Lucy had shown him how Harry had made her want to go to Utopia. Anders had been angry when she explained that she didn't know how to make the effects of the mind control long-term, or to effect people on a massive scale. He was even more furious when he realized that only the weakest of minds could be impacted by the technique Harry had shown her. Those who were drugged, asleep, sick, or broken.

He had yelled, thrown her into a wall, and broken everything in office. They had to stage a robbery at that site, just so Rodolfo wouldn't become suspicious.

After that discovery, they had gone to another site and tried to see if the machine worked like Lucy said it did. Anders brought a short strand of hair with him for the test.

"Who is it?" Lucy asked, intrigued by the smirk across her partner's face.

"A man named Sam Worthington."

"What are you going to make him do?"

"Dream of me."

Lucy frowned. "Why?"

Anders stared at the controls with something like sadness, and for the first time Lucy thought he might be a little human after all. "Because I want him to know what it feels like."

She regarded the man nervously. "How will we know if it works?"

Then the smirk was back, and Lucy felt better.

She was done dealing with humanity.

"Oh, I'll find out."

/

Anders returned to the small cottage where Sam lived late in the evening, rang the doorbell, and waited.

Slowly the lights of the house flicked on, mutters coming from within as a body ambled up to open the door.

"Yes?"

Anders had to stop his breath from catching when he saw him.

Sam was ruffled. Flustered. His pajama bottoms were conspicuously hidden by a robe, his face was flushed, his breathing rapid.

Yes.

This is what he had wanted.

"Did I interrupt something?"

Sam shook his head in confusion, refocused his gaze. "Joel?"

Anders laughed. "How are you, Sam?" he asked, stepping forward into his lover's personal space, rubbing thighs against thighs, reaching out a hand and grasping a hard and willing cock through layers of clothing. Sam gasped and shuddered, and Anders leaned in close, whispering in his ear, "Miss me?"

Suddenly there was a sharp pain lacing from his stomach, and Anders was falling down the few steps leading up to the house.

Sam stalked up to Anders, sprawled on the ground, rubbing the spot where he had just been punched.

"Who the hell do you think you are? This is my home! My life!" Sam shook his head in something like disgust. "Look at you." He gestured down at Anders. "You're pathetic!"

"At least I'm not living a lie!" Anders spat, jumping to his feet. Ready to fight. "I'm not pretending to be something I'm not, denying who I really am! At least I've the courage to do that!"

"The courage?" Sam snorted. "This, you coming here, attacking me. You think that's courageous?"

Anders glared. "At least I'm not pretending."

Sam looked at him with compassion. "I'm not going to say what we had didn't mean something, Joel. Because it did. I needed you like you needed me, and I thought you understood that. I felt bad, when you came here all those months ago. I thought I had hurt you, that you might have-" Sam stopped. Shook his head. Looked Anders with that same, sad expression that the younger man couldn't decipher. "But I must have been mistaken."

He walked away, back up to his front door, throwing Anders one last warning look. "Don't ever come back here again. You're not welcome."

Anders spat on the ground, wincing when blood darkened the salvia.

No, he wasn't welcomed here. Not now.

But he would be.

/

The next day Anders returned to the office at their appointed time, looking angry.

Lucy skirted around him. Observing him, trying to decide if he was too angry to be spoken to. "Did it not work?"

"It did." He walked up to the controls with purpose, fiddling with knobs, throwing leavers into place.

Lucy decided to take a step closer. "Then what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," he denied instantly, focusing his attention on the meaningless task before him.

Lucy looked at her partner and studied him for the first time. Noticed how young he still was. The hurt radiating from him.

She wondered if he might be broken, too.

Anders finally turned to her, staring at Lucy intently. "We need the Paradox Machine and the Doctor to run it, and there's only one way to be certain he'll come back."

Lucy feels something constrict in her chest. "Martha." The Time Lord's companion. His other half.

"Yes," Anders affirmed, adjusting another control. "The Doctor would come back for her."

But would Harry come back for Lucy? Could she make him? Maybe if she undid the horrible thing she had done? If she changed the world back into his creation, would he still complete her? Would he still make her special?

"So we have to make her call him, to need him," Anders continued.

Lucy snapped back to the present. "So what are we going to do?"

Anders flicked another knob, smirking. "We're going to kill her lover."

That night, Anders stole a hair from a homeless drug addict by a local theater, and watched him murder Tom Milligan as Lucy gave the command from half a city away.


End file.
